Behind the Bonehouse (28 page)

It was Alan who woke me up. Alan, the way he is today. He was repairing the water heater tonight, just before dinner, replacing a metal rod of some kind, and he was struggling with the mechanics of it, the screws or the bolts or something, and he started swearing, which he almost never does, and he threw a screwdriver and wrench across the pantry, then slammed the pantry door. He grabbed his helmet, and the key to his Triumph, and rode off without saying a word.

He didn't come home till after 8:00, and he apologized then, and said he didn't know what had come over him. And he fixed the water heater, and ate his dinner, and lifted weights before he went to bed.

But when we were lying there about 11:00, Emmy snoring on her bed, my head on Alan's shoulder, he said, “You know what bothers me, Jo? It's that even if I end up being acquitted—and I've got no reason now to think that's going to happen—there'll always be people who think I'm guilty and got off because of somebody I know, or some kind of technicality. Think what that would be like. For you, and for Ross too. I don't see how we'll ever be done with it.”

I talked to him about it for a good long while, with me telling him we've got to turn it loose, and not worry about what we can't fix now or in the future. (Advice I ought to take myself and almost never do.) I don't know that I said anything that helped. Except that Bob Harrison believes he's innocent. He hasn't vacillated at all. And he's talked to practically everyone he knows telling them too. Alan said, “Yeah, that helps.” And wrapped his other arm around me before he finally got to sleep.

At least I talked to Jack's father. Finally. And Alan will watch Ross so I can leave in the morning. I figure I'll make it to Toledo tonight, and leave for Detroit really early tomorrow. Jack will be six hours ahead, and he usually calls by 1:00, from what his father said.

Emmy's paw isn't healing, and I can see the vet's getting worried.

Sunday, May 17th, 1964

It was late morning when Jo finally found herself in a very nasty part of Detroit not too far from the bridge to Canada. She'd passed through block after block of urban horror—crumbling unpainted buildings, trash blown into every doorway, sad, grim, hopeless looking people shuffling past bars and pawn shops, where once there'd been well-kept houses and small family-owned businesses.

The things of man run amok. They made Jo wince and feel sad and sick, since neither she, nor anyone else, had figured out what to do.

When she turned into Jack Freeman's parents' side street, there were a few more livable houses and fewer commercial wrecks. And then, unexpectedly, two blocks ahead, she saw what looked like a tangled jungle—a green oasis in a concrete desert that turned out to be theirs.

It got stranger as she got closer—a huge lot, there in the city, completely hidden by high trees and overgrown shrubs woven through a rusted chain-link fence that looked like it bound the whole property.

An even taller iron gate had been left unlocked for her, and she shut it again behind her, then drove across an acre of weeds in scrubby grass on a cracked meandering concrete drive that ended in front of a huge Victorian shingle-sided house that had once been painted gray.

Slates had fallen from the roof. Moss grew on the siding. Paint hung in strips from the window frames and the moldings around the front door.

Decay on such a scale depressed her, and Jo told herself, as she stood and stretched beside her pick-up, not to let herself look too appalled in case someone inside was watching.

The rain she'd been driving through since the Michigan line gusted around her, under overgrown trees half-blocking the sky, as she picked her way across weeds in the walk to the heavy mahogany door, and knocked twice, waiting uneasily, before it was opened by an elderly woman who was nearly six feet tall.

She looked almost skeletal, which may have made her seem older than she was. The heavy caked makeup too, seeping into cracks and wrinkles, the nonexistent eyebrows painted into place, the turquoise eyelids, the magenta lips—turned her into a caricature of what she once must've been.

She wore a sleeveless, flowered, diaphanous silk dress with a yellow silk scarf that hung to her knees. And she stared at Jo silently for entirely too long once Jo had introduced herself, before she said, “You may enter,” in a husky Russian accent. “Dr. Freeman is at the hospital finishing morning rounds. I shall show you my collections until he returns.”

“You're Mrs. Freeman?”

She nodded as though Jo were feebleminded, before she turned, limping on her right leg, and crossed the front hall.

It was a surrealistic experience, watching Eloise Freeman—listening too, to her ongoing monologue, as she led Jo from room to room—from library to morning room, from ballroom to withdrawing room, from guest rooms to nursery—showing her a priceless collection of antique musical instruments from every peak, and jungle, and back alley of the world.

“The keyboard collection is the centerpiece of my life's work. This pianoforte we know with certainty to have belonged to Amadeus Mozart from 1774 to 1777 when he was a child in Salzburg. The piano on your left was Frederic Chopin's when he lived in France with the adventuress Amantine Dupin, known to the world as George Sand. Another equally important piano acquisition will be brought to fruition shortly. Early harpsichords we will see displayed in the next room.

“The sackbut on the far wall, the serpent there, and the lizard, are early medieval horn instruments with substantial historical significance.”

There were many Medieval and Renaissance stringed instruments Jo knew nothing about—the dulcian, the gamba, the rebec among them. There were violins owned by famous makers and performers, and ceremonial temple sitars from India and Nepal, along with seemingly unlimited varieties of drums from places Jo had never heard of.

The breadth and depth of the collection was astonishing. But also distinctly disturbing. The house could collapse, the grounds become jungle, the neighborhood a war zone, while Eloise Freeman wandered alone from one room to the next, hiding her injured hand in her scarf, caressing her obsessions.

Jo said, “That's amazing,” and “That's really beautiful,” till she thought she sounded like a much-impaired parrot, while she studied Mrs. Freeman's painted face for perceptible signs of Jack.

Then—when the guided tour had gotten to what had started as a sun-room—Jack's father walked through the door from the garage, carrying a worn black medical bag, smelling faintly of rubbing alcohol, mixed with glycol and soap.

He looked slightly older than his wife, probably in his mid-to-late eighties—a small man with a serious face that examined Jo's carefully, as his heels clacked across cold terrazzo, hurrying toward her.

His hair and beard were gray and neat. His eyeglasses were rimless. A gold watch-chain hung across the vest of his three piece black suit. And though his eyes had faded to a soft gray-blue, Jo saw what looked to her like world-weathered astuteness there that brought any hint of easy softness into dispute.

He asked if she'd been offered refreshment, and when Jo said no, he suggested they go through to his study where he'd make her a glass of Russian tea.

Mrs. Freeman walked away, back toward the room that was filled with pianos, while her husband took Jo's hand and held it for a second, before he led her through the opposite door.

“I am so pleased to meet you, after all you have done for Jack. You know, the first Christmas after the war, when Jack had returned from Europe, one could see he had suffered emotional trauma. And yet, he spoke of your brother with such respect I was happy to have Jack leave us and visit him in Kentucky.”

“I remember that visit. Tom really liked Jack.”

“I had hoped Jack would agree to consult a colleague of mine at that time, who worked exclusively with returning soldiers, but, alas, it was not to be. Readiness and timing can be of great importance.”

“He's doing really well now.”

Dr. Freeman nodded, and almost bowed in Jo's direction, before he began making tea on a hot plate on a library table under one of the north windows. She wandered the perimeter of the room reading titles in the bookcases that covered the walls, unable to think of something useful to say. She finally asked if she remembered correctly that Mrs. Freeman had been a pianist.

“A very fine pianist indeed. The injuries she suffered robbed her of that artistic outlet, as well as her career. Would you care for milk or sugar?”

Jo shook her head, and he motioned her to a leather chair on the right side of the fireplace.

He sat and sipped across from her, then set his glass, with its ornate silver handle, on the slate-topped table between them. “One would have hoped that Jack could have spoken to us, but he rarely did, of his inner life, even as a child.” Dr. Freeman raised his hands above his shoulders in one of the “what-can-you-do?” gestures understood around the world. “It can be terribly difficult to confide in one's family in the best of circumstances. Though since Eloise and I did endure many dangers and difficulties in our escape after the Bolshevik Revolution, we would not have been crushed by hearing of the hardships Jack overcame as well. I have sometimes feared he chose not to speak to spare our feelings, rather than his.”

“Jack was born in Paris?”

“Where we first emigrated, yes. It was here I legally changed my name to David Freeman. Here I have been truly free for the first time in my life.”

He sipped his tea, and stared at the empty hearth before he spoke again. “I cannot tell you how relieved I was, how joyous, for that I believe is the only suitable word, when Jack phoned two years ago, after you and your husband had been so kind to him.”

“We didn't do anything that—”

“I sobbed, I assure you, like a very small child. For to hear his voice! To see him again, after seventeen years of not knowing whether he was alive or dead—I ask for nothing more as long as I shall live.” There were tears in his eyes, and he brushed them away with a folded white handkerchief he'd pulled from a vest pocket. “To have an opportunity to assist you now, is a very great pleasure indeed.”

“We didn't do anything anybody else wouldn't have done for Jack. I think it was more a matter of timing, and him being ready to change.”

“He would disagree. He has told me that without your—”

The phone rang then, and Dr. Freeman rose stiffly from his chair, and stepped across to the desk. “Yes, operator. This is David Freeman speaking. … Yes, I shall wait. … Jack my son! Good. … You
did
! Thank God! … Yes, yes, I agree. Still, there is someone here who wishes to speak to you with the greatest urgency. I shall hand the phone to Mrs. Munro.”

Jo was standing by him by that time, and she grabbed the old-fashioned metal receiver and told Jack as fast as she could what had happened to Alan. “Can you tell me more about Carl that morning, when you saw him standing in the parking lot? How near was he to Alan's car, and was there anything else you noticed?”

Jack told her, making blood rush hot to her face, making her grip the receiver even harder before she spoke again. “If I give you two telex numbers—one for the Sheriff's Department and one for Equine—could you write out everything you saw and Telex it to Sheriff Peabody, and to Alan too? I know it'll be expensive, but I'll pay you back when you get home …” She gave him the numbers, and then asked when he'd be back.

“Wednesday. Good. I can pick you up. You wouldn't believe what Alan's been through. … Thank you. Yes, I know you do. … I can go find your mother while you talk to your father, if you want to … Then I'll give him the phone. I'll see you Wednesday afternoon.”

Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro's Journal:

Saturday, May 23rd, 1964

I haven't written in the journal in days. This last week has felt like we're living in a pressure cooker. One minute we'd be picking our way across a minefield, the next we'd be thinking there was some chance we could prove Alan's innocence—right before the rug would start moving, making us scramble to stand.

Garner talked to Brad Harrison on Monday the 18th on Brad's lunch hour, and asked what the heck he was doing in February down at Cumberland Falls State Park talking to Carl Seeger. I guess Brad looked totally shocked and flustered, which always makes Brad bluster, and then he backpedaled and refused to answer, accusing Garner of undue pressure and putting him under duress. Garner's good, though. He got him calmed down and kept him from feeling threatened, without ever telling him who'd seen him, so that Brad eventually told him that Carl had called him earlier that week and asked if he could see him somewhere discreet that Saturday where they wouldn't be observed.

Brad was driving down to Williamsburg, Kentucky that Friday to be in a friend's wedding, and if he wanted to meet on Saturday it would have to be there, or somewhere close by, in the morning. They chose the parking lot at the park. And he said Carl asked a lot of questions about how Equine was doing. What new products, if any, there were. How people in the lab were putting up with Alan. How the new production manager was getting along. Mostly, he wanted to complain about Alan and compare the “era under his rule” with the way it once had been.

Garner had led him to whether Carl had asked for keys, or materials from the lab, and Brad denied it hotly. Garner ended up believing it was as accurate a report as he was likely to get, and none of us could see how it helped our case.

Garner went to meet with the Circuit Court Judge on Wednesday and laid motions before asking him to have the case dismissed (and got the motion dismissed instead, pretty much the way he figured), then asked for a court date postponement till the court meets the third Wednesday in June, which the judge granted.