The Blood Ballad (17 page)

The article then went on to name all of the accomplishments of the band and those of Belle Morgan in particular. The newspaper had three photographs next to the article. One was of Belle, looking beautiful and demure in her flowered dress and coiffed hair, the second showed her onstage with Eddie, and the third was of her packed suitcases sitting on the living room floor.

I printed out the article and had Sheriff Mort's phone number dialed before I made it to my car.

“Joachim,” he said.

“Mort, it's Torie.”

“Yeah?”

“You're going to have to pull some strings for me.”

“What strings?”

“I want the original case file for Belle Morgan's disappearance. I'm particularly interested in what was packed in her suitcases,” I said.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Just get me the file if you can. I'll call you from my office. I have something else I need you to do.”

“What's that?” he asked.

I threw my briefcase on the seat next to me and started the car. “Exhume a body.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Let me get to my office with my maps. I'll call you back.”

Fifteen

All the way back to New Kassel, I felt as though there was something I was missing, a tree that I couldn't see for the forest in the way. I put in a CD that Leo had burned for me and listened. The harmony created by the trio of Scott, Miriam, and Belle was magical. It was as if their voices had been made to blend together. Then I listened closely when Miriam would take a solo part. Soon I was convinced that whoever it was singing “The Blood Ballad” on the recording that Clifton Weaver had sent me, it was not Miriam Morgan. Leo King would probably be able to tell me better, so I called him and asked if he would analyze another recording as soon as I got it back from Mort.

When I arrived at my office at the Gaheimer House, Mary was waiting for me. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“You want something to drink?”

“Yeah,” she said. I gave her some quarters, and she went to the soda machine that Sylvia had installed over ten years ago. She came back with a Dr Pepper because she is my daughter.

“Wait, if you're here, who's at home with Matthew?”

“Rachel took the bus home with him. I walked here from school.”

“Oh,” I said. “You bored?”

She nodded.

From my briefcase, I pulled out the stack of research I'd done at the library and spread it out on the table. I also had a copy of the lyrics from “The Blood Ballad.”

“What's up?” she asked, and took a drink of her soda.

“Well, I've got a song that's a confession to a murder,” I said.

“You're so weird,” she said. “Couldn't you just get a job at a bank or something?”

I smiled at her. “Now, hear me out. I've got this song, in which a woman confesses to hacking up a woman named Belle. And Eddie, the Eddie in the song, is in mourning.”

“Okay,” she said.

“This song is on a tape with other Morgan Family Players songs. Two of the members of the band were named Eddie and Belle, and they were married.”

“So, then, the song is about them,” Mary said. “Why is this so difficult?”

“Because according to the newspapers, her husband, and the police, she ran off with a lover,” I said.

“Then she ran off with a lover. Why do you have to blow everything out of proportion?” she said, waving her arms around. “‘Ooh, Rudy, our next-door neighbor is a Mafia leader.' ‘Ooh, Rudy, those dead people aren't really dead at all.' ‘Ooh, Rudy, if I try hard enough, I can find an unsolved mystery in the elementary school cafeteria!'”

I just stared at her, openmouthed. “Wow, Mary. You got some issues there you want to talk about?”

“
I
don't have issues.
You
have issues. You're psycho.”

I crossed my arms. “Are the kids at school making fun of you because of me?”

“No, they make fun of you. They leave me out of it,” she said.

“Well, I'm no stranger to kids at school making fun of me,” I said. “And they're all losers, as you so eloquently like to say.”

“Normal moms don't do this kind of stuff,” she stated.

“Who says I want to be normal?”

“Well, maybe
we,
” she said, indicating herself, “would like to be normal.”

“So you do have issues.”

“Only because of you,” she countered.

“Look, I don't have time for this. I've got to—”

“Discover Atlantis?” she asked.

My temper flared—finally. “Now just a minute!” I said. “I've never even searched for Atlantis.
That
would be my cousin Phoebe. What is wrong with you, Mary? I mean, what is
really
wrong with you? Are you beaten? Are you starved? Do you live in a shack with no toys, no computer, no TV? I mean, are you mistreated in any way? Because if you're not, then shut the heck up. You can be perfect when you're the mom. All right? Until then, please, for the love of God, give me a break and realize that I love you.”

She blinked then.

“That's right, Mary. I love you. I know you think I don't. I know you think I only love your perfect sister—who isn't perfect, by the way—and I know that Matthew gets a lot of one-on-one time because he's still really young. But you … you are the sparkle in our family,” I said, making wiggly motions with my fingers.

“What? Maybe I don't want to be a sparkle,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.

“Oh, I know, I understand. You with your black-hole, life-sucking attitude. You try very hard not to sparkle. But guess what? Like it or not, you are the shining spark to our family, the person who sets us apart from everybody else. Because when you shine, girl, the whole town can feel it. You keep our family out of the dark. Now, maybe none of that matters to you, and that's fine, but regardless of what you say, you are a part of us and we love having you. Now, try all you want to push us away and make us miserable,” I said, walking right up to within inches of her. “But I'm going to love my little spark anyway.”

She gulped down her Dr Pepper and looked away.

Since she wasn't going to respond to anything I had just said, I took out my maps of Progress and the surrounding areas and began to study them.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“A stone bridge on the way to a mill.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because that's where they're going to find Belle's body.”

She began flipping through the photocopies and the notes I'd taken, while I studied the maps. I pulled a reference book on old mills from the shelf. It gave me information, like when the mill was built, what sort of mill it was, who built it, and what became of it. My cell phone rang then. It was the woman from the library in Progress.

“I found your baptismal record for Rufus Albert Kiefer. There is no father listed. Mother is one Peggy Kiefer. Godparents are Ann Kiefer and Louis Kiefer.”

This Ann was most likely Peggy's younger sister, and Louis could have been an uncle or a cousin or any one of a number of other relatives. No father was listed. The boy was definitely Peggy's illegitimate child, and he even had his grandpa's middle name. Albert, or Al for short. “Thank you so much,” I said. Before I hung up, she added something.

“I know Rufus Kiefer,” she said.

“What do you mean, you know him?”

“He's the accountant at our church. I didn't put it together when you called,” she said. “Until I saw his middle name. He has this very distinct way of signing his name with this big
A
in the middle. It's bigger than any other letter in his name. Then it hit me who you were inquiring about.”

Only in a small town. All that I'd accomplished in my life would never have happened if I'd lived in a big city. The librarian gave me the name of the church that she attended, and then I apologized. It had never occurred to me that Rufus could still be living. I don't know why. He'd be in his late seventies, I figured. I wrote down the name of the church and made a mental note to go and see Mr. Rufus A. Kiefer.

After I hung up with her, I studied the book on mills and found only two that were even still working during the time period that I needed. The Babcock mill had been partially turned into a little trading store. So Belle could have been going there for any number of reasons. There was only one stone bridge the song could be referring to—Hahn's Bridge.

“I've got it.”

I dialed Sheriff Mort, who answered on the second ring.

“Hahn's Bridge. I think if you check under there somewhere, you're going to find the body of Belle Mercer Morgan. It's totally off the beaten path, not on a major road. But it is in the vicinity of the Babcock mill. Whoever killed Belle could have waited until dark to actually dig the grave. It could have been a day or two before anybody even crossed the bridge.”

“Wait, wait. Torie, you're going too fast.”

“The Hahn stone bridge was on private property. Unless Godfrey Hahn decided to go to town or to the mill or what have you, he'd have had no need even to cross the bridge. People back then, they didn't go to town every day. Sometimes days would go by and they wouldn't leave their property. During the Depression, they couldn't afford the gas to go anywhere, and everybody had to do chores, so that they had food and clothes. I mean, going to town was a once-a-week event. Her killer could have had a window of a day or two, even.”

“All right, all right,” he said.

“I remember my grandma telling me once how they had to wait for the chickens to lay a full dozen eggs one Tuesday, so they could sell them to get the gas money to take my uncle to the doctor. One of the chickens got stubborn and took four hours to lay that last egg. So it's not like people just traveled to town on a whim.”

“Okay,” he said. “I understand.”

“Mom,” Mary said.

“Hahn's stone bridge. Is it still standing?” he asked.

“Yes, it is. It gets more traffic today, since Godfrey Hahn's very large plot of land has since been divided and sold to several families. So there're more people in and out of there, not to mention a school bus every day.”

“Mom,” Mary said.

“All right, I'll send somebody out.”

“Mom,” Mary said for the third time.

“What?” I asked.

“This woman … Belle Morgan. Isn't that Isabelle Mercer?”

“Who?” I asked.

“What, who, what?” Mort asked on the line.

“Rachel did all of that research to impress you. When she was auditioning for the job. Isabelle Mercer, who disappeared one night. It looks like it could be her. And the name is similar.”

I blinked and then blinked again. “How would you know what she looked like?”

“Because I helped Rachel with the research.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, you did.… But why?”

“She needed it done fast. So I took notes while she made that ridiculous costume out of the shower curtain. Then she typed all of the notes into the presentation that she gave.”

“Mort, I'll call you back. Send a team to the bridge anyway.”

I hung up the phone. “What was your original source?” I asked her.

She walked over to the bookcase in my office, ran her fingers along the spines of the books, and then stopped and pulled one out. “
Unsolved Mysteries of Granite County,
written by Sylvia Pershing. 1962.”

I gave her a big wet kiss on the forehead. Like it or not, she was definitely my daughter.

Sixteen

I wasn't sure what surprised me more, the fact that Mary had actually helped Rachel with her research—and then later pretended to be bored with the presentation—or the fact that Mary had actually remembered any of it. She could be pretty flighty at times, and unless there was a “hot guy” involved, she didn't remember a whole lot. She rarely remembered to do her homework, and if she did, she never remembered to turn it in. She couldn't remember which of her clothes were clean or dirty, so I ended up washing clean clothes more often than not, while she wore dirty ones over and over.

So the fact that she remembered the whole Isabelle Mercer story made me think that maybe, just maybe, there was a part of her that cared if her sister did well or not. She just didn't want to
appear
as though she cared.

Sometimes, teenagers are just twisted.

I sat in my office at home, reading the book about unsolved mysteries that Sylvia had written in 1962, while Rudy cooked dinner. The more I flipped through this book, the more I learned about Sylvia. Or, well, I should say, the more layers of Sylvia that peeled away.

I couldn't remember a time when Sylvia hadn't been the queen of New Kassel. And she'd ruled it with an iron fist. I was thinking Queen Elizabeth I had nothing on Sylvia Pershing. Sylvia's sister had been just the opposite. Where Sylvia had been lean and hard, Wilma had been round and soft. Sylvia expected the best out of everybody, and Wilma had just expected love and kindness. But the two took care of each other, neither had ever married, and they complemented each other.

At some point, Sylvia had had an affair with the owner of the Gaheimer House, and he'd left her everything. She'd begun building on that, buying houses and buildings in the business district, until she'd accrued half the town. She took great pride in her accomplishments, but none of it had she done for herself. It was done for the sake of Mr. Gaheimer and the town of New Kassel. And, dare I say, for future generations. She could have a soft spot once in a while; you just had to blast through rubble to find it.

I'd loved Sylvia as if she were my own flesh and blood. She was my mentor. When she died, she left me everything she'd accumulated. Not only was that a huge responsibility but also a very humbling experience. I owed most of everything I was to her.