The Blood Ballad (14 page)

I picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff. “Mort, we have a huge problem.”

Twelve

I opened the door and let Mort in at almost midnight. I handed him the envelope by the very edge. “As soon as I realized what it was, I stopped handling it. I know you're going to find the postman's prints on it, but maybe, just maybe, you'll find a print from the person who sent it to me.”

“Hang on. Slow down,” he said.

“I also touched the CD and the letter inside, so I suppose you'll check those for prints, as well. Here's a transcript of the lyrics to the song,” I said.

Mort read the lyrics. In the amount of time it had taken him to drive out to our house, I had played the CD several more times and had written down the simple yet perplexing words.

He glanced up at me with a sharp expression. “You think this is for real? It could just be the lyrics to a dumb old song,” he said. “Those mountain people are always singing about dying and lost love and dying … dying, mostly.”

“Well, this wasn't written by mountain people; this was written right down here in southeast Missouri,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” he countered.

“The voice says, ‘I'm going to sing you a murder.' Then after the song is over, she takes credit for writing it. The names in the song, Eddie and Belle…”

“What about them?” he asked. He removed his hat and scratched his head.

“Eddie Morgan is one of the members of the Morgan Family Players, and his wife, Belle, played the guitar for the band as well. Now, I've been told that Belle Morgan just up and disappeared one night,” I said. “What if she never disappeared at all? What if she was murdered?”

“Like the song says,” he stated.

“Exactly. I mean, it says right in there that whoever the narrator is takes an ax to Belle, and then Eddie ‘moans,' which you could take to mean he's grieving.”

“Oh boy.” He glanced around the room.

“What?”

“Well, what has this got to do with Clifton Weaver? I don't have the manpower to investigate a cold case when I've got Clifton Weaver in my morgue,” he said. “It's not even my jurisdiction!”

“I'll investigate the cold case,” I said. “That's what I do best. Besides, Clifton Weaver either sent this to me because he was worried about what he'd discovered or somebody else sent it to me to let me know what Clifton Weaver had discovered. Either way, Sheriff, I think this song is the reason Clifton Weaver was murdered.”

“I'll see what I can do,” he said. “In the meantime, what are
you
going to do?”

“Libraries are closed tomorrow, so there's not a whole lot to be done right now. But I think I'm going to go talk to a few of the family members and see what they have to say about Belle Morgan's disappearance.”

He nodded. “All right, let me know if you need anything.”

“I will.”

*   *   *

The next morning, I called my dad and met him at Denny's in Arnold for breakfast. Denny's is usually packed because Arnold doesn't really boast many other breakfast-type restaurants. It's situated right off of Highway 55. I found my father in what used to be the smoking section. Arnold passed a no-smoking law in restaurants awhile back. My father's been planning on setting the city hall on fire in retaliation but hasn't gotten around to it.

“Hey!” I said.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said. Dad was getting old. It was starting to worry me. I mean, we're all getting old, but dad seemed to be noticeably aging. Of course, I didn't see him on a daily or even weekly basis like I did my mother or grandma. Sometimes a whole month went by before I'd see him. Still, I was fairly certain that people weren't supposed to age noticeably in a month. He seemed thinner, grayer.

“You feeling okay, Dad?” I asked.

“I'm fine,” he said and fiddled with the cigarette pack on the table next to him. “Actually, no, I feel like hell. This is against my civil rights. No smoking in a public place! What the hell kind of crap is that? I'm telling you, there's some snooty hausfrau in city hall, what do you want to bet?”

“Calm down, Dad.” I decided not to tell him that New Kassel was about to pass the same law. No use in him having a stroke at breakfast. “It was voted on.”

“Well, the majority of this city is stupid, then. So what's up?”

“Well, how much do remember about Scott Morgan and his family?” I asked.

The waitress came, and I ordered a Belgian waffle, hash browns, and orange juice. Maybe I'd finally get to have the breakfast that was interrupted at Fräulein Krista's. He ordered the Grand Slam, eggs over easy, extra coffee, extra black.

“What you really want to know is what I remember about my family and the Morgan family, isn't it?” he asked.

“Has Mom talked to you?”

He smiled. “No,” he said. “But usually if you've got a question like this for me, it's family-related.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, sorry I'm so transparent.”

He waved a hand at me. “If it's the worst thing you do…” he said. “Well, my dad learned to play the fiddle from Scott Morgan. Him and Roscoe Morgan were good friends. Dad told me he almost married Miriam Morgan. Said her fiddle playing turned him on.”

“Dad,” I said.

“What?”

“I really don't want to hear about my grandpa being turned on.”

“Well, it's the truth,” he said. “Told me nothing was hotter than Miriam with a fiddle in her hands, and if she hadn't been so darned sexy, Dad told me, he woulda never been the fiddle player that he became. Because he spent an extraordinary amount of time down at Scott's place, learning the fiddle, when he was really just wanting to be with Miriam.”

“Oh, brother,” I said and rested my chin in my hand.

“I think he also wanted to impress her. So he'd just practice the hell out of that fiddle,” he said, laughing. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “What is it you really want to know?”

I didn't tell him about Glen Morgan or Phoebe's theory that my grandpa was actually the son of Scott and not Nate Keith. Instead, I told him everything else. “Glen is convinced that Scott stole some songs from my grandpa—your dad,” I said. “I've heard the recordings.”

He perked up then, and his eyes got a sparkle. “You've got new recordings of Dad?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “From the early days. Dad, they're really neat.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I've often thought something like that happened. Because Dad told us we were forbidden to even talk to the Morgans. Kind of hard when they went to the same little church in the valley. But that's all right. Us Keiths, we'd sit on one side of the church, and the Morgans, they'd sit on the other.”

“You think that was it? The music?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. Imagine barely being able to feed your family, and then the man you helped write songs for went on to be fairly rich with your music!”

“Why didn't Grandpa take him to court?” I asked.

Dad shrugged. “Who knows? Dad was just a country boy. Probably didn't even know that option was open to him. All he wanted to do was plow corn and play the fiddle. Drink a little whiskey once in awhile.”

And walk his property. Grandpa would get up every morning and “walk the place,” as he'd tell my grandma. He'd start on one end, walk down through the orchard, down the gully by the sinkhole, back up the other side, then down past the pond and back home. Then he'd walk every garden and check the plants, the soil, the rocks, you name it. He had an almost supernatural connection to his land.

“So, you believe Glen Morgan, then?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“Have you ever met him?”

“Once,” he said.

“Your impression of him?”

“Hell of a banjo player.”

Musicians often judge a person's character first by how good a musician that person is. Then afterward they consider things like personality, behavior, and intelligence.

“Poor George, now, he was tone-deaf,” Dad said.

“George Morgan?”

“Yeah, I think he was the oldest brother. His wife, Ava, she was my mom's cousin.”

“Okay, Dad, I have to ask you: What do you know of Belle Morgan?”

“Eddie's first wife?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He shrugged. “Don't know. She took off and left Eddie and both those boys before I was even born. Eddie remarried and had three more kids, I think. Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘she took off'?”

“She told Eddie she was going to the mill one afternoon, and she never came back. But Eddie said she'd packed her things. Eddie thought she'd been having an affair and she wanted out. Scott was all torn up over this because Belle did a lot of the singing. He didn't understand how she could just leave them. But she did. And it ruined the band.”

I said nothing. I glanced out the window and was happy when the waitress brought us our food. My stomach rumbled. I hadn't realized how hungry I was.

“Why?” he said. “What's going on?”

“There's just been some new evidence come to light that, well, maybe she had help disappearing,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked as he cut his eggs up and peppered them generously.

“So you've never heard any stories that would lead you to think that anything else happened to her other than she just ran off with a lover?”

“That's not what I asked,” he said.

I smiled. “I know.”

“What do you know that you're not telling me?” he said.

“Nothing for sure—yet. Hey, listen, I'm meeting with Leo King later. He's analyzing some old reel-to-reel recordings that belong to Glen. He's going to put them on CD for me. Do you want to tag along? I'm telling you, Dad, you've got to hear these recordings. They are so awesome.”

“Sure, what time?”

“Later today, around four.”

“I'll be there,” he said. “Oh, by the way. Can Matthew have a snake?”

“What?” I nearly shrieked.

“Well, a friend of mine needs to get rid of his snake, and I think it'd be perfect for Matthew. He'd love it.” He swallowed his food and glanced up at me. Then he added, “Or not.”

Thirteen

All the way back to New Kassel, I debated the pros and cons of Matthew having a snake. In the con column were things like “slithery,” “have to feed it mice,” and “gets loose and gives me a heart attack.” The pro column had yet to have an entry.

I went to the Gaheimer House and worked the afternoon shift in my reproduction green velvet dress with chenille ball trim, an outfit that reminded me of a pair of curtains. Since Sylvia was gone, I could splurge on getting myself a few new dresses and retiring the decade-old ones. Just as I was about to close up the museum and go back and change, there was a knock on the back door.
Irritation
is a mild word for what I felt, because, well, as much as I love my new dresses, you just can't go to the bathroom in them, and I was looking forward to getting this thing off. Now it would have to wait.

I answered the door and my breath caught in my throat. A lot of things could be said about my cousin Phoebe Keith. One of them was that she was by far the prettiest grandkid in the family. She had emerald green eyes, dark auburn hair that fell to her hips, a cute little squared-off chin, and dimples. She was also impulsive. Phoebe was standing in front of me, wearing pink cotton capris, sandals, and a flannel pajama top with sleeping bears all over it. The mercury said it was about thirty-six degrees outside. She either had nerve damage in her toes and didn't realize they were frozen or she was superhuman. She would claim to be superhuman. Phoebe was about thirty-seven, the baby of Uncle Ike's family. Uncle Ike had always been fairly normal. In fact, of my father's siblings, I'd say he was the most normal of them. Uncle Jed, on the other hand, had never really been “all there,” but I used to explain it away as alcohol overload. Taking in Phoebe on the back porch of the house made me wonder if alcohol was really to blame or if weirdness was something that just ran in my family.

Well, at least I'd escaped it.

I know what you're thinking.

“Torie,” Phoebe said with a smirk. “I've come to settle this once and for all.”

Oh boy.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Why are you dressed like such a freak?” she asked, glancing down at my dress. “You look like you're wearing a curtain.”

Then she just whisked by me, into the kitchen of the Gaheimer House.

“I went by your house, but somebody else is living there now,” she said.

“Yes, we moved out to the country.”

She glanced around the room and smiled. “I always liked your house. Why'd you move?”

“Oh, you know, the country air,” I said. “How's everybody?”

“Good,” she said. “But you know why I'm really here.”

“Why's that?” I asked. “You want something to drink?”

“I've discovered a flaw in your
history,
” she said. She spoke the word as if it were a joke. “And here are the letters to prove it.”

She handed me the letters from our great-grandmother like they were yesterday's grocery list. I cringed at the thought of the eighty-year-old letters being tossed about in her bag and folded and refolded time and again. I took the yellowed letters gingerly from her and instantly began reading them.

“I'm gonna look around while you take all that in,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, barely looking up in her direction. The letter paper had been folded so many times that the words were more faded at the creases. I read through the letters, then read through them again. I all but ran to my office and turned on the copier. While I waited for it to warm up, I read through them again.