Marcia Talley - Daughter of Ashes

‘We’re here about the order to destroy the county records,’ I said, cutting to the chase.

‘It was your signature.’ Fran popped out of her chair waving a photocopy of the county purchase order under Jack Ames’s nose.

Jack snatched the printout from her hands and scanned it impatiently. ‘It looks like my signature,’ he said after a moment, ‘but it isn’t.’

Jack scrabbled around on his desk until he unearthed an executive order printed on vellum declaring September the First ‘Cat Fanciers Day’ in Tilghman County. ‘ That’s my signature,’ Ames said, stabbing an index finger at the scrawl at the bottom of the document, next to an official gold seal. ‘My A’s look more like O’s. Check it out.’

We leaned over the document. Fran and I had to agree.

While we were contemplating the implications of that, a bell dinged and a voice called out, ‘Sorry I’m late!’

Jack frowned. ‘Ginny, come in here for a minute, will you?’

Ginny’s head popped around the door but her smile disappeared the minute she saw us. We weren’t smiling either.

Jack handed Fran’s copy of the work order to his receptionist. ‘What can you tell me about this?’

She glanced at the photocopy and handed it back. ‘You left it on my desk with a Post-it that said “Expedite.”’

‘I see. Would it surprise you to learn that I knew nothing about it?’

Ginny’s face paled. ‘But… I don’t understand.’

‘Somebody obviously put it on your desk. Any idea who that might have been?’

‘I don’t know, Jack, honestly. It was there when I came back after lunch on Wednesday. You were away at that fundraiser in Salisbury, so I assumed you’d left it there on your way out. After we got the mold report, the order made a lot of sense.’ She shrugged. ‘So I expedited it.’

‘Was the office locked?’ I asked.

Ginny bristled. ‘Of course!’

‘So the obvious question is who else has office keys.’

Jack ran a hand through his hair. ‘Lord, just about the entire city council. My wife, Susan, of course.’

‘Your father,’ Ginny added helpfully.

‘Him, too. And Tad, my driver, until I fired him and took away his keys.’ He leaned forward. ‘And that was before the boy’s arrest, I should point out.’

‘Your nephew drove you out when you visited my house that day, didn’t he?’

Jack frowned. ‘Yes, why?’

‘Then I think I know who hid Rusty’s helmet.’

‘Helmet? If there’s a point here, Mrs Ives, I wish you’d get to it.’ He made a Broadway production of checking his watch. ‘I’m already late for the hospital.’

‘OK. Here’s the timeline. Rusty rode his motorcycle to work that morning wearing his helmet. You paid us a call and while we were chatting, your driver, Tad, wandered off. You had to call out to him, remember? Later that day, Rusty had an errand to run in town and couldn’t find his helmet so he took off on his motorcycle without it. Shortly thereafter, he was run off the road by someone driving a late-model black Mustang registered to Tad Chew.’

Jack paled. ‘So you’re telling me it wasn’t an accidental hit and run?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. It was an attempt at deliberate murder.’ I studied him carefully.

Jack stared at me for so long I felt like I was under a microscope. ‘Someone else could have been driving the Mustang,’ he said at last.

‘Always a possibility, I suppose, but since Tad is under arrest, it’s clear the sheriff doesn’t think so.’

‘Why?’ Jack flopped back in his chair, waved an arm dismissively. ‘Tad is an idiot! It can’t have been his idea.’

‘I don’t think it was,’ I said. ‘I think you put him up to it.’

I watched his face carefully as his expression morphed from outrage to genuine puzzlement. ‘That’s bullshit! Why would I want to hurt Rusty?’

‘It’s because of Baby Ella,’ I told him. ‘It all started with the baby.’

While I talked, Jack had picked up a pen and was idly twirling it between his fingers, first one way, then the other. ‘Andy Hubbard tells me the baby belonged to a black woman named Nancy Hazlett who committed suicide back in 1952.’

I nodded.

‘It’s sad, but so what?’ Jack said. ‘If there’s a connection, I just don’t get it.’

‘Nancy was passing for white,’ I explained. ‘She went to high school with your father.’

From the folder in my handbag, I extracted the photocopy I’d made of Nancy and Cliff performing in Oklahoma! . Jack stared at it for a long time. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he said at last. ‘Looks exotic, maybe Spanish.’

‘Her father was white,’ I told him.

Still fingering the photograph, Jack nodded. ‘I see. But, what does that have to do with…’ Suddenly he threw his head back against the headrest of his leather chair, stared up, as if consulting the ceiling. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’

Fran started to say something, but I silenced her with a frown and a subtle shake of my head.

Jack leaned forward, his face grave. ‘Is there proof of this?’

‘From what we can tell, Nancy and your father were actually married.’ I pulled a copy of one of Rusty’s iPhone photos out of the folder and pushed it across his desk. ‘Rusty took this photograph, realized its significance and then, for reasons I don’t quite understand, forwarded it to his mother. To Kendall, not to Grace.’

Jack snorted. ‘Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Sounds like Rusty wanted to cut himself in on a piece of the action.’

‘Action?’ Fran looked confused.

‘Kendall had my father by the short hairs for years, but I thought it had to do with dodgy land deals back in the forties. This,’ he said, tapping the photo, ‘is something else altogether.’

‘How far do you think your father would go to keep this information from coming to light? Once this news became public knowledge, your father’s reputation would be toast.’

Jack smirked. ‘Dad doesn’t have much of a reputation to protect.’

‘But what if,’ I began, choosing my words carefully. ‘What if it wasn’t his reputation he was worried about. What if it were yours ?’

‘Mine? You must be kidding.’

‘In this climate of gotcha journalism, one could argue that it’d screw up your chances at the White House.’

‘White House!’ Jack hooted. ‘I haven’t even made it into the House of Representatives!’

‘Your father likes to think big, I hear.’

‘But he doesn’t think for me . Son of a bitch.’

I leaned forward and spoke quietly so that Ginny wouldn’t hear. ‘I can think of only one reason why your father would authorize the wholesale destruction of the courthouse records. Only one reason why he showed up at the animal shelter last night. There is something in those records that he doesn’t want found, and once Fletcher and Warner finish up under the tent over there, we’re going to know what it is, too.’

‘It’s my fault Dad turned up that night,’ Jack said. ‘There was a message about hazmat on my machine. There’s always some kook calling to complain about pollution from his goddamn chickens. They asked for Mr Ames, so I assumed…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Dad was here when I played back my messages.’

‘That kook was me,’ I confessed. ‘You signed the destruction order, or so we thought.’

‘And since you didn’t,’ Fran said, rising from her chair, ‘Hannah and I better get back to the courthouse.’

I stood, too. ‘And you’ll need to push on to the hospital.’

‘Hospital? I don’t think so. Not today. Let the old fool stew in his own juice. I have things I need to do.’