The Blood Ballad (8 page)

Jed would have been my grandpa's eldest son. He couldn't have been more than a few years old if the third baby was on its way. “That was Grandpa,” I said.

“Which one?” she asked.

“The second voice,” I said. We both strained to listen to the next song, even though the volume was up plenty. It was as if we were listening for what we couldn't hear, whatever was supposed to be between the lines.

The song was a comical tune about a boy who liked to fish all day. “Why, little Jed even slept with the fishes,” the lyrics went. Then the chorus to the song: “Fishes, fishes, little fishes, Momma likes to beat him with the dishes. Take your time, sleep all day, those fishes aren't goin' anywhere anyway.” Then there was the fiddle solo. It was a typical jaunty dance tune written during that era. Goofy lyrics were often applied to happy music, anything to make the American people smile, even if just for an evening. Quite often, there was some hefty satire going on, too, and there was no shortage of morbid songs, either. But the happy songs were what people latched onto, especially in the Midwest.

But this song … there was something about this song.

“I don't understand,” Stephanie said. “What are we listening for?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “But … there's something…”

“What?”

“I've heard it before,” I said.

“Well, wouldn't that be the case? You said Grandpa played all the time.”

“Yeah, but that's not where I've heard it.”

I went to my computer and Googled the lyrics to the song. A couple of Web sites popped up. Imagine my surprise when right there on the computer screen was the song “Jed's Fishin' Days,” written and copyrighted by none other than Scott Morgan. That was where I'd heard it before. It was a Morgan Family Players song.

“What?” Stephanie asked.

“This says the song was written by Scott Morgan, but Grandpa just said there on the recording that he wrote the song for his son Jed.”

“What's the copyright date?”

“Well, that doesn't necessarily mean anything,” I said. “These old songs—what I call Americana music—some of them are old English ballads or Scottish highland music. They came to this country with the immigrants, who then sang them and changed them, until they evolved into what groups like the Carter Family recorded. Some of these songs are hundreds of years older than their copyright date. So you can't really go by that. Not always. Scott Morgan would have put whatever date he recorded the song as his copyright date, even though it could have been in his repertoire for years. Obviously, the date on this is six years after Grandpa would have written it. My point being, if anybody would have said anything to Scott Morgan about the authenticity of this song, he could easily have said, ‘I wrote that song years ago.' Unless Grandpa or somebody took him to court, nobody would be the wiser.”

“So … this isn't bluegrass, right?” she asked.

“No, bluegrass came later, but bluegrass is descended from this music. You wouldn't have bluegrass without it. It's very difficult to explain the subtle differences in some of this old music, especially when each is so dependent on the other for its existence, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don't,” she said, smiling.

“Well, it's like bluegrass borrowed the old highland music from Scotland and England, but then added the African influence of the banjo … but then it also has a very American country feel to it. Like the style of picking the banjo. The clawhammer style, that's fairly unique to bluegrass. After the musicians had spent years living in the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, and the like, those songs from the old country had become distinctly Americanized. It's very complicated but also very organic. At any rate, the stuff that our Grandpa played wasn't bluegrass. He did play it eventually, when it became popular, but not this, not his early stuff.”

She shook her head. “How do you know all of this?”

I smiled. “Several reasons. One, our dad's a musician, and I was just interested. When I was growing up, I discovered Dad's recordings of Grandpa. Grandpa could play a breakdown better than anybody I've ever heard. When I started hosting the music festivals here in New Kassel, I began reading up on it more.”

“Wow, I had no idea,” she said. “So, where did Grandpa learn to play?”

“Well.” I sighed. “I was always told that his father, Nate, played but that Grandpa and his sister both learned to play from their neighbors who lived down by the creek bed. The Morgan family.”

“Who were they, exactly?”

“Well, they were a fairly famous musical family. At least in this area,” I said. “They had recording deals and everything. There was even a petition going around to change the name of Progress, Missouri, to Morganville back in the thirties, but it didn't pass.”

Her eyes grew large. “And you're telling me that Grandpa learned to play from them?”

“Well, according to this recording, it seems as though he actually wrote some of their material, too.” I typed in the name of another song that was now playing on the CD, a sadder song about the ghost of girl who lived in the meadow and wore daisies in her hair. That song, too, was credited to Scott Morgan. By the time the CD was over, an hour had passed, and in some form or another, my grandpa had claimed to have written at least nine songs that I had Googled and found Scott Morgan taking credit for. “But nobody ever knew.”

“Is that what Glen Morgan wanted to tell you?” she asked.

“No, actually,” I said. I glanced at the clock. “We need to reopen the museum.”

She walked with me as I went to the front door and flipped the sign to
OPEN
. I turned to her then. “He claims that our grandpa was actually the son of his grandpa—Scott Morgan.”

“What?” she asked. Her gaze searched my face, trying to read my feelings about the whole mess. “Is that possible?”

I shrugged. “Well, sure, Stephanie. Anything like that can happen. I mean, you're a good example.”

Something flickered in her eyes, and immediately I knew I'd said the wrong thing.

“I didn't mean it like that.”

She turned away and headed back to the office.

“Steph,” I called out after her. “Stephanie.”

When I caught with her, I grabbed her arm and swung her around in one motion. She wasn't crying, but the look of hurt was heavy in her eyes. “You know I love you,” I said. “You know our whole family accepts you. I didn't mean any disrespect by what I said. You know my mouth just opens and out fly ridiculous, often thoughtless things. I just meant that of course these things can happen. That's all I meant. Please don't be offended.”

I often felt like I walked on eggshells around Stephanie. Not because she was supersensitive or melodramatic, or prone to tantrums, but because it had taken me thirty-something years to be given the gift of my one and only sister and I was afraid that at any moment she'd realize what a screwed-up family we were and leave. I mean, it wasn't as if she
had
to associate with us.

“It's just that…” she began.

“What?” I asked.

“I don't know, maybe I expect too much.”

“What? Stephanie, you can't expect too much from me. There's nothing I wouldn't give you. You know that,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “It's not you. It's everybody else, like that Glen Morgan guy. I am John Robert's granddaughter, too, but he wouldn't speak to me at all about any of this. He had to speak with you.”

“Steph, that's just because of what I do. I've got a reputation as being the family historian, that's all.”

She shrugged, not entirely convinced. “I … I just wish I could go back in time and spend one day at their house.”

“Whose?”

“Grandma and Grandpa's. Just one day.”

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I wish you could have been there, too. But look, you can help me with this. Maybe this—whatever this mystery is we've stumbled upon—maybe you can help me with it. Then you'll have contributed to the family history.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “You must think I'm silly.”

“Not at all,” I said. And I meant it. I would have felt the same way, probably worse, had I been in her shoes. “All right, I've got to talk to Glen Morgan.”

“Off and running,” she said, laughing.

“That's me.”

“You still smell like skunk, by the way,” she said.

“Great. Glen must have thought I was some sort of freak.”

We were laughing as I turned to pick up the phone, but before I had the chance, Sheriff Mort knocked on the door frame. “Hey, are you busy?”

“No, come on in.”

“I need you to come down and look at headlights. Remember?”

“Right, sorry.”

“It's all right,” he said. “Look, I just wanted to let you know that the body was positively identified by Rosalyn Decker as that of Clifton Weaver.”

“Is she a suspect?” I asked.

“Everybody's a suspect until I say different.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“Believe it or not, a gunshot wound to the stomach.”

I could feel my brow creasing. “I don't…”

“You want to know what I think?” he asked.

For the record, I like Sheriff Mort Joachim. He's young, spiffy, and always immaculate, even if he does spend the majority of his time in the woods. But I like him because he doesn't view me as a threat of any kind. He sees me as a resource. He doesn't know this town like I do. And he knows it. So it doesn't hurt his ego in the least to come to me for help. I like it when a man has a reason to have a huge ego but doesn't have one. It's a good thing when people are more concerned about the world around them than what that world thinks of them. It's also not as easy to manage as one would think. We're all guilty of worrying about what everybody else thinks of us. And if your mouth and your brain don't always have the greatest connection, like mine, then you've got reason to worry. Because, like me, you're probably always offending somebody.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“This man was beaten terribly. I think he was beaten, then shot, then shoved in a box and dumped over the edge of the cliff. And I think whoever shot him was shooting at you and Eleanore, too.”

“How do you know?”

“It makes sense to me that when they saw you and Eleanore, they assumed you both had witnessed something.”

I sat down then, feeling for the chair behind me. Stephanie disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a can of Dr Pepper. “Here, drink,” she said.

I took a big gulp. “So, they were actually trying to
kill
us. Not just—they weren't just hunters who got lost.”

“I won't know for sure until you take me out there and show me where you guys were when the shots were fired. I need to analyze the crime scene and collect evidence. But I think it's a good assumption. In fact, those first few shots you heard may have even been the shots that killed Clifton Weaver.”

“But…” My blood ran cold and I found it difficult to form words.

“Put your head between your knees,” Stephanie said.

I did as she instructed.

“But what?” the sheriff asked.

I raised my head and the room spun. “But damn, that's awfully brutal, don't you think? That means Clifton Weaver probably knew he was going to die.”

“Yup.”

“But why beat him up first?”

“Information.”

“Huh?”

“What kind of information?” Stephanie asked.

“There are only two reasons to beat somebody up first when you're going to kill him anyway. One, you're just a sadistic bastard who wants to inflict pain, or you think your victim knows something that you can learn by beating it out of him.”

My mind reeled, and the Dr Pepper wasn't strong enough.

“Like I said, that's just my theory for right now. I need you to come out soon and show me where you were when the shots started.”

“Right,” I said and swallowed.

“For now, I'm running down everything I can on this Weaver guy.”

“What do we know about him?” I asked.

“What, you don't know him?”

“I don't know everybody in the town, regardless of what you may think. This is one guy I don't know.”

“We know … nothing much. He was born south of here—in Progress.”

“Progress?”

“Why?” Mort asked.

“Nothing, that's just where our dad was born. His whole family is from Progress,” I said.

“Huh,” he said, tapping his chin and mentally filing that for future reference. “At any rate, he was born down there, his parents moved up here when he was about seventeen, he graduated from New Kassel High School, went to a community college with Oscar Murdoch for two years, joined the army for several years, maybe even did a tour in Korea—I'm still checking on that—lived in Wisteria for a while, then moved back here. In general, there's not much to report. He's been a shoe salesman almost his entire life.”

“I don't get it. What does a shoe salesman know that would get him killed?”

“I don't know,” the sheriff said. “Is there any way you can get away?”

I glanced at Stephanie.

“Of course,” she said. “I'll hold down the fort.”

I grabbed my jacket. Just as we were about to head out the door, Mort glanced around and said, “You did a great job with this place.”

“Thanks.”

“I like your office at the other house better, though,” he said. “I like all those things you have hanging on the walls.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I haven't decorated this one yet.”

Who would have thought that the new sheriff paid attention to interior design?