Who Killed the Ghost in the Library: A Ghost writer Mystery (11 page)

Chapter 20

“They found WHAT?” Randy said in the stockroom of the bookstore.

“A little louder. I don’t think they heard you in Fort Worth.”

“What do you want me to say? You come in here, so nonchalant, and tell me they found Aggie’s body and a set of bones in a well. How did you think I was going to react?”

“A little less vocally,” I replied. “You don’t want to scare away your customers.”

“Did you actually see the bodies?”

“I didn’t stick around long enough for that. Mike said it would take a few hours to do everything they needed to, and that I should just go home.”

“Glad you came here instead. Are you alright?”

“A bit unnerved, actually. I mean, I kind of expected it, but expecting it and finding out it’s true are two different things. Not to mention it’s the second body I’ve been close to in the last three days. I need a drink.”

“You don’t drink,” Randy pointed out.

“Good point. I need a Dr Pepper.” I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I’m going over to the coffeehouse. Want anything?”

He sho
ok his head. “I’m good. Are you going to go home after that?”

“Definitely. I am filthy, tired and my arm
is sore. Of course, if I had a TV to watch in the living room, I’d prop my feet up on my coffee table and watch an old John Wayne movie. Oh wait, I don’t have a coffee table anymore, either.”

“You still have the TV in your bedroom, right?”

“I suppose I could just move the TV into the living room for now. But it’s not as big as the other one. Guess I’ll just read a book or something.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty about what happened?”

“If you have a guilty conscience, you have only yourself to blame. But thanks for cleaning up the mess,” I said, kissing him on the cheek before I left.

Thankfully, my parents weren’t at the coffeehouse when I went over there. I bought some chocolate chip cookies and a Dr Pepper. Sitting in my car eating a cookie, I decided to go visit Grandma Alma before I went
home. It was probably a long shot that she had made any progress with the stuff I had left with her, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Walt, Pete and Grandma Alma were still in the sun room when I got there. One of them had left to get a notepad and pen apparently. They were all going through the papers; there were three separate piles in front of them. “I see you recruited some help, Grandma,” I said as I sat down.

“After you spilled the beans about my poker prowess, they didn’t want to play anymore. So we decided to look at the papers. Three old brains are better than one.”

“I don’t think you’re old, Grandma,” I replied, gently squeezing her hand. “Sometimes I think you’re younger than I am.”

She smiled and patted my hand. “You’re my favorite granddaughter.”

“I’m your only granddaughter.”

“Not my fault my other children had all boys.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Did you all find anything interesting?”

“Well, yes and no,” Walt said. “Half the people mentioned here are dead. Some of them didn’t lose their land once Ashton died because the sales hadn’t gone through at that point. But I don’t think you have all of the bills of sale here. I know of several families who were forced out of their homes because of Ashton that aren’t mentioned in any of these papers.”

“I don’t think that’s all of them. I had a bit of a problem at the house, and everything got disorganized. It’s going to take me a couple of days
to get things straightened out.”

“What kind of problem?” Pete said.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I replied. “It’s already been taken care of.”

“I went through the certificates,” Grandma said, “and I found something strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Well, I was looking at Stanley
IV’s birth certificate…”

“His fathe
r is the one who died in the 1950s, right?” I said, trying not to give away that I already knew the answer and a whole lot more.

“Right,” she said, digging through the pile in front of her until she found what she was looking for.
“Here it is. Stanley IV was born in September 1940, which means he was fourteen when his father died.”

“Ok, so?”

“Amelia and Stanley III got married in June 1940.”

“She was pregnant when they got married?
Wouldn’t that have caused a scandal back then?”

Grandma shook her head. “I was at the wedding; so was Walt. Amelia looked tall and willowy in her white satin wedding gown. And thin as a rail. There was no way she was six months pregnant when she got married.”

I looked at the certificate. Stanley A. Ashton III was listed as the father, and Amelia was listed as the mother. But it looked like the certificate had been altered. “Do you have your magnifying glass in your wheelchair bag, Grandma?”

She pulled the bag onto her lap and dug around. “Here you go. What’s the matter?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied. I lowered the magnifying glass over the certificate and scanned it slowly. “It looks like someone tried to scratch out another name and covered it up by writing Amelia’s name bigger. Look, see Stanley’s name? It’s small print. Now look at Amelia’s name. It’s twice as big as Stanley’s. Why?”

Grandma took the magnifying glass and certificate from me. “You’re right. I didn’t even notice that before,” she said, handing them back to me. “Whose name do you think is under Amelia’s?”

I looked at the writing again. “The first name starts with an ‘a’, I can tell that much. There’s an extra loop in the middle of the large ‘a’. The ends of the ‘m’ deliberately go longer than they should; the ‘e’ looks like it has a loop as well. Makes it look like half of the number eight. The ‘l’ looks like it has a line through it, and the ‘i’ has a hump. The ‘a’ looks…oh my gosh…”

“What’s the matter?” Walt and Grandma said together.

“Amelia isn’t Stanley IV’s mother. It was Agatha Foley.”

Chapter 21

I rushed over to the library to talk to Sam. It had been a couple of days since I had been to see her, and I was hoping she had turned up some information for me.

“I was fixing to call you,” she said as I walked in. “I found some interesting things when I was doing the search you requested. I mean,
really
interesting.”

“Like a birth certificate for Stanley Arthur Ashton IV? And the mother’s name is Agatha Foley, not Amelia Underwood?”

Her mouth fell open. “How did you know that?” I pulled out the birth certificate I had and showed her what we had found. “That doesn’t look like the one I found,” she said. Going through the papers on her desk, Sam pulled out a folder and flipped it open. “Here is the one I have,” she said, handing it to me.

It looked identical to mine, except that the mother’s name was clearly visible: Agatha Marie Childers. “I take it Childers was Aggie’s maiden name.”

Sam nodded. “I found her marriage certificate, and the names match.”

“But the baby was born in Missouri, not Texas.”

“My guess is the Ashtons sent her there when they found out she was pregnant. Not a good idea to have a pregnant woman hanging around the house when you’ve just gotten married.”

“What else did you find?”

Sam came around the desk with the folder and pointed to a nearby table. “This way I can spread this stuff out.” She opened the folder again and started placing papers on top of the table. “I found a birth certificate for Stanley’s daughter Cecilia. It’s a Texas one, but it also lists Agatha Childers as the mother.”

“But she was born after Stanley and Amelia were married.”

“Maybe Amelia couldn’t have children,” Sam suggested.

“Or Stanley was still fooling around with Aggie, who was his housekeeper by then and married herself.”

She shrugged. “That’s something you would have to ask Aggie.”

“Not bloody likely,” I muttered. “She’s dead.”

“What?!” I told her what had happened earlier in the afternoon. “Do they think it was an accident? Maybe she fell in when she was taking a walk.”

“Mike didn’t seem to think so, considering the blood they found in her kitchen.”

“Wow. I wonder who killed her.”

“Maybe the same person who killed Clifford Scott and blew up his house.”

“You think the two are related?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m beginning to think this has nothing to do with the land grab that Stanley III was involved in.”

“You mean something more personal?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense, either, considering Amelia and the kids were never heard from again.”

“Let’s discuss that for a moment,” Sam said. She looked over the papers until she found what she was looking for. “I only found one death certificate, and that was for Cecilia. She died in 1968 in a car accident.”

“How awful! Wait…
1968? Are you sure?”

“Yes, why?”

“Ray Foley disappeared in 1968.”

“It’s just a coincidence.”

“Probably,” I agreed, although I wasn’t totally convinced. “So no death certificates for Stanley IV or Amelia?”

“I checked all over the country. Nothing.”

“So it’s possible they are still alive then.”

“I suppose so, unless they moved to Europe or something.”

“This whole thing is driving me nuts. None of it makes sense at all.”

“Are you sure you still want to write a book about the Ashtons?”

“Well, Aggie is the one that asked me to do it, and she’s dead. I’m going to have to think about it. Right now, I really just want to go home, take a nice, hot bubble bath and sleep for about twelve hours.”

“I did find something out that was very interesting,” Sam said, grabbing another small stack of papers. “The Ashton house is in Aggie’s name.”

“You’re joking!”

“No, I’m not,” she replied. “I found a transfer of the deed with her name on it. It was filed two months after Stanley III’s death.”

I glanced at the deed. “This happened around the time that Amelia and the kids left. That explains why Aggie never left the house. But why did Amelia give it to her in the first place? Did she even have the right to do that? I mean, that house had been in the Ashton family for several generations.”

“Which brings us to Stanley’s will, naming Amelia the executor of his estate. He set up trust funds for both children, which they would have gained access to when they were twenty-five, and the rest of the estate went to Amelia.”

“Nothing for Aggie?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Pretty cold thing to do to the woman who gave you two children.”

“Ain’t that the truth?
Do you think Aggie blackmailed Amelia? Perhaps threatened to reveal the truth about the children’s births?”

“I didn’t get the impression that Aggie was that kind of person, but then again, I only talked to her a few times. Anything is possible, I suppose. I wonder what will happen to the house now.”

“The Historical Society may try to have it declared an official landmark, considering how important the Ashtons were to the development of the town.”

I massaged the temples of my forehead for a minute. A doozy of a headache was starting to happen, and I needed to get home to relax. “Can I take this stuff with me?”

“Of course,” Sam said, “I made a copy for you and one for our files.” We gathered the papers and put them back in the folder. “You have to admit, this would make for an interesting story. Everyone loves a good scandal, especially when it involves those with lots of power.”

“That’s true,” I conceded, “but the real question in this case is who had power over who
m?”

Chapter 22

I stopped at my favorite BBQ place, Leon’s, and picked up a huge baked potato with chopped beef, cheese, butter and sour cream on the side, and a slice of pecan pie. Just the smell of the food made my stomach growl all the way home.

There was a patrol car parked in my driveway when I got there, and I groaned. So much for a quiet evening. Parking next to it, I looked over and saw Mike sitting inside. He got out of his car at the same time I did, and I walked around to the passenger side to get my messenger bag and my food. “What do you want?”

He sniffed the air. “You went to Leon’s.”

“Yes, I did, and I have enough for me, not for you.”

He took both bags from me and closed the car door. “That’s okay. I didn’t come to eat, just to talk.”

“About what?” I headed for the front door and unlocked it, allowing him to go in first since his hands were full. Closing the door, I hung the keys on the hook by the front door, turned around and gasped. “You two certainly did a good job of cleaning up.”

The whole room had been rearranged. All of my old furniture was gone, and in its place was a brand new, cream colored sofa and matching loveseat. The sofa was against the longest portion of the wall, and the loveseat was in front of the short wall next to the kitchen doorway. There was a chocolate brown rug in front of them, and a cherry wood coffee table sat on top of it. Matching end tables were at either end of the sofa, with matching table lamps that emitted a soft glow in the room. On the opposite wall was an entertainment center, where a brand new, flat screen TV sat. “Is that a 42” screen?”

“Fifty
, I believe Randy told me,” Mike said as he took the food to the kitchen.

“You guys didn’t have to do all this,” I said. “I just wanted the mess cleaned up.”

“Well, we felt bad about what happened, and when we sat the loveseat right side up again, we noticed the back was broken. Randy said he would take care of it, so after I finished cleaning up, I left. This is the first time I’m seeing this.”

I walked over and gave him a hug. “You two did a great job. Thank you. What happened to the papers that were on the floor?”

“Randy told me to put them in a box. He said he was going to take them to the bookstore and sort them out.”

“Whatever you two are keeping from me must be pretty big,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. I pulled two plates out of the cabinet and set them on the kitchen table. “I’ll split my baked potato with you. I’m sure you are just as hungry as I am.”

A few minutes later, we started eating. I had fixed some salad to go with the potatoes.
As we ate, I wondered how long we were going to avoid talking about Aggie Foley’s death.

“They finally got Aggie out of the well,” Mike said. “The bones, too.”

“Any chance there was some form of identification with the bones?”

“No,” Mike replied. “But my guess would be they have been down there a long time.”

“How long?”

“If I had to guess? Forty, maybe fifty years. But I’m no expert.”

“Ray Foley.”

“What about him?”

“I wonder if it’s him.”

“No idea. I’m not sure how they are going to identify the bones.”

“What about the M.E.? Can’t they do that?”

“I’m not sure what she’s going to be able to do. She’s going to work on Aggie first to determine her cause of death. Then she’ll worry about the bones.”

I had a gut feeling it was Ray. “I talked to Sam at the library this afternoon. She discovered some interesting information that might be important.”

“Such as?”

I went into the other room and pulled the file out of my messenger bag. I handed it to him as I sat down. “For starters, Amelia signed the Ashton house over to Aggie before she left town.”

“I wonder why,” he said as he looked through the file.

“Maybe because she wasn’t the mother of Stanley IV and Cecilia.”

“Who was?”

“Aggie.”

“You’re joking.”

I took the file from him, found the birth certificates and handed them to him. “Look for yourself. Stanley III and Amelia got married in June 1940; Stanley IV was born in September 1940. Grandma Alma said that there was no way Amelia was pregnant at the wedding, because she was skinny as a bean pole. But on the birth certificate I have here, someone wrote Amelia’s name over Aggie’s to make it look like Amelia was the mother. Sam found the original, which clearly showed Aggie listed as the mother.”

“I wonder who changed the name.”

I got the other file out of my bag. “The handwriting looks childish. Maybe it was Stanley IV himself that did it,” I replied, handing the certificate to Mike.

“
I see what you mean,” he said, comparing the two certificates side by side.

“Sam also did a search for death certificates for Amelia, Stanley IV and Cecilia. She only found one; it was for Cecilia. She was killed in a car accident in
1968.” I took a bite of my potato. “I just don’t think this has to do with any business dealings that Stanley III may have conducted back in the 1940s or 1950s. It just feels more personal.”

“If that’s the case, then why kill Cliff Scott?”

“He was one of the officers who investigated Stanley III’s death. Maybe someone didn’t like the fact that they wrote it off as a suicide. Your grandfather and Cliff both said they thought it was murder, not suicide. But Walt said he was pressured by someone to say it was suicide.”

“Did he say who?”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t tell me that.”

“Did Cliff have any idea who it might have been?”

“No.”

“Did Sam find any death certificates for Amelia or her son?”

“Nope. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t dead, too. It’s possible they went to Europe. Maybe they changed their names.” I took a drink of Dr Pepper. “What about that guy we found? Is he conscious yet?”

“A doctor from the hospital left me a voicemail this afternoon. He said that our man was conscious, so I’m planning on going out there to talk to him as soon as we’re done.” He finished the last bite of his potato.

“I think I’ve had enough excitement for the day. All I want to do is relax, watch a good movie on my new TV, and go to bed early. I don’t suppose you’ll call me and let me know what he says.”

“Official…”

“…police business. Yeah, I know. I figured that is what you were going to say.”

“Will you let me know if you find out anything else about the Ashtons?”

“If I find something relevant.”

“Anything you find, I want to know, no matter how small.”

“Got it.”

He looked at me for a moment, shook his head and stood up. “Thanks for supper.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied as I walked him to the door. I watched him drive off, then cleaned up the kitchen, grabbed the folders off the kitchen table, put them in my messenger bag, took the keys off the hook and left. There was one person, so to speak, that I wanted to talk to.

Twenty minutes later, I parked in the Ashton driveway. It had been over five hours since the bodies had been discovered, and the police were gone. There was no crime scene tape on the front door, which opened before I could knock. It closed behind me and I turned around to face Stanley. “Busy day around here.”

“Yes, indeed,” Stanley agreed as he led the way to the library. “Where is Aggie? She usually keeps me informed.”

I put my bag down on his desk before answering. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Ashton. Aggie is dead.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am. She was murdered.”

“Murdered? By whom?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “They found her body in an old well in the northeast corner of your property.” I watched his face for any type of emotion, but he gave nothing away. “They also found an old set of bones in the same well.”

“Good Lord,” he said, pacing the floor.

“I have a question for you.”

“Regarding?”

“Your relationship with Aggie.”

“What relationship? She was my housekeeper.”

“She was more than your housekeeper. She was the mother of your children.”

Stanley stopped pacing. “Amelia was the mother of my children.”

“Amelia raised them, but Aggie gave birth to them,” I said, pulling the folders out of my bag. “I have copies of the original birth certificates right here. They both state that Agatha Marie Childers was the biological mother of Stanley IV and Cecilia.”

A knock at the front door interrupted our conversation. “Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

“I wasn’t even expecting you,” he said. “I guess it’s my night for company.”

I hurried out of the library toward the front door. Opening the door, I saw an elderly woman standing on the front porch. Her grey hair was pulled back in a chignon, and her bright blue eyes seemed to glow in the dusk of the night. She was wearing a peach colored pants suit with an off white silk blouse underneath the jacket. A gold locket hung around her neck, and small diamond earrings flashed in the front porch light. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Ashton.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but Mr. Ashton died almost sixty years ago.”

“I am well aware of that, young lady. I also know that he has been
haunting this house for all those years.”

I didn’t know how to answer her. I thought Aggie was the only one who had known about that.
“Does he know you?”

“I would certainly hope so. I’m his wife, Amelia Underwood Ashton.”