If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance (10 page)

“I don’t think I’d be saddled with this”—she held up the ax—“in my death if I were innocent, do you?”

Though I wasn’t totally educated on all the historical details, the trial of Sally Swarthmore was a huge part of Broken Rope history. During the summer tourist season, we held a daily reenactment of the reading of the verdict, though I didn’t tell Sally I hadn’t seen the show since I was a kid. Our old courthouse was the same old courthouse where Sally’s trial had occurred. As with the jail and Jake’s sheriff’s office, this older, more interesting courthouse was across the street from the newer, more modern one.

The older building was a popular and dramatic stop for all tourists. They’d come in and sit in the gallery as men dressed as jurors from 1893 shared the horrible story with the audience. Then, an actress portraying Sally would come in and speak to the crowd a moment before the guilty verdict was read. She hadn’t testified on her own behalf at her trial, so she didn’t for the performance either. Instead, she just gave a brief overview of her family without many details, because no one had many details. Then she would faint just like she had in real life, and come to shortly. She was hauled out of the courtroom, all the while screaming and crying.

Then the main storyteller/juror would come back and share the rest of the story. Sally hadn’t lasted long behind bars. She died of what the coroner called “a failure of the heart brought on by severe taxation of the nerves.” There were conspiracy theorists, though, who claimed she’d either been killed or had escaped and left town only to roam southern Missouri—sightings were still being reported to this day. It was this last
bit that the tourists seemed to love the most. One summer, we held a “Spot Sally” contest and gave prizes to the first ten people who could find the ten
WANTED
posters we hid throughout town. It turned out to be far too competitive and took attention away from the many other Broken Rope attractions, so we never held the contest again.

This year the part of Sally was being played by the biggest thorn in my side since childhood, Ophelia Buford, aka Opie. She was a poor little rich girl and the person who was allegedly (I still wasn’t ready to accept it, obviously) dating my younger brother.

“But do you think that maybe you didn’t kill your parents?” It was a leading question, and not a very good one at that. The truth was, I didn’t want the ghost sitting on the other end of my bed and holding an ax to be guilty, but still, I shouldn’t try to manipulate her already sketchy memories.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I don’t remember doing it. I was found guilty, and I’ve got this ax. I probably did it but just can’t or won’t remember.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s see if I can decipher some more of these notes.” I turned back to the book. “It says that the first witness was your family’s housekeeper, Betty Benson. Do you remember her?”

Sally’s eyes opened wider. “I do. Yes, I do remember Betty. She was a quiet thing, went about her work without complaint.”

“She claimed that it was your scream that pulled her from a nap. She came downstairs and your father’s…uh, body was in the parlor and you were there, too. Hang on, I think it says that she found you without even one drop of blood on your dress.” Though the notes weren’t written in code or shorthand, some of the words were abbreviated and hurried.
I wasn’t sure if
no bld. on dress, no drops even
meant “no blood on dress, no drops even” but it was my best guess.

Sally nodded. “Interesting.”

I thought it was more than a little interesting, both from a legal standpoint and as someone who’d never heard that detail before.

“Oh, ick,” I said as I read the next note. “No one found your mother’s body upstairs until later. The police found it. Betty claimed that when she’d seen your father alone downstairs earlier in the day, she thought she heard you laughing upstairs, but you said you weren’t in the house.”

“What do you suppose that means?”

“I dunno,” I said. “That’s just what she said, according to these notes. At least that’s my interpretation. We’d call that hearsay these days. I expect they did back then, too. It looks like Betty might not have been one hundred percent certain.”

“Maybe she heard my mother laughing?” Sally said.

“Maybe.” I thought about the significance of these long-dead reporter’s notes. Could there be something in them that could have helped clear Sally? I didn’t think her guilty verdict had ever been in question, but by reading only a few lines, I had begun to wonder if maybe, just maybe…I shook it off as the repressed attorney in me wanted to rear its head. “Did you like your parents?”

Sally laughed. “I don’t remember ever liking or loving or not liking or loving them or my sister. I don’t remember anything as strong as hatred though. I wasn’t happy some of the time, but I’m not sure exactly why.”

“Hang on, you had a sister?” The courthouse portrayal might have mentioned that but I had probably been too young to pay attention.

“Of course,” she said in the same tone Jake uses whenever I show my ignorance of Broken Rope history. “She’s the one who said she saw me burning a dress.” Sally sat up. “Oh, I just remembered that right this second. My sister saw me burning a blue dress a couple days after the murder, before I was arrested.” She looked down at herself. “Perhaps like this one.”

I closed the book, keeping my thumb in the spot I’d been reading. “Do you remember burning a blue dress, or do you remember her
saying
you did?”

“At this moment, only that she said I did.”

The long-abandoned attorney wannabe in me stirred again. I might have dropped out of law school, but, still, sometimes the truth needed to be uncovered.

From somewhere at the front of the small house, my cell phone rang. “Excuse me.” I swung my legs off the bed. I’d been so tired the night before, I’d just dropped everything in the front room, my cell phone included. Usually it was plugged into a socket behind my nightstand.

“Will you go into the Monroe House?” Sally asked as I hurried to the phone.

“Hang on a second, Sally.”

It was on the coffee table, surprisingly still charged enough to ring. “Jake, hey, what’s up?”

“Meet me at my office?”

“Sure, but what’s up? You okay?”

“Fine, fine. I just need to show you something in between shows. Gotta go.” He clicked off.

Sally was standing in the doorway. “You’re not going to go to the Monroe House, are you?”

“Not right this minute. I have to meet Jake, but I’d love to go over this book again later. How’s that for now?”

Sally sighed and gave me a strained, impatient look before she disappeared.

In truth, I had no desire or time to be roaming around condemned haunted houses. I didn’t really have the time to be reviewing the life of Sally Swarthmore either. If I’d learned anything from Jerome’s visit, it was that I had to remember there wasn’t much I could do for these ghosts. Dead was going to stay dead. Gram just continued on with her life when one of them visited. She knew better. I wasn’t
there
yet and was curious enough about them and their lives to take a deeper interest.

I got ready in record time, not even bothering to blow-dry my hair but just pulling it into a wet ponytail, and then steered my Nova downtown.

The weather still wasn’t miserable. It was just cool enough
that the humidity wasn’t as much of a burden as it could be. It was a rare southern Missouri July when being outside wasn’t torturous.

Of course, the payoff was that the streets and boardwalk were extra crowded with foot traffic. I didn’t know if the news of the previous evening’s murder had spread and if we would soon see a bump or a decline in visitors. Considering our history, we’d probably see a bump. A new and mysterious death in Broken Rope was not
good
news, of course, but it was always morbidly interesting.

Main Street had been blocked off to cars since the Southern Missouri Showdown, the cooking contest that the cooking school students competed in to kick off the summer tourist season. As per summer-usual, I had to get creative in parking.
I searched for a place behind Jake’s building, but all those secret spots were taken. The tourists were catching on.

I finally found an open spot right off Main and in front of the old courthouse. I was a few blocks from Jake’s, but they were short blocks. Having now made Sally’s acquaintance, I looked at the courthouse differently. It was just an old brick building, yet it had seen the likes of Sally Swarthmore, a person who, if she was anything in life like she was in death, could be somewhat annoying but genial. I’d never been like Jake; I’d never “felt” the history of the town in its buildings. Jake could walk into some place and need a moment to soak in the atmosphere, soak in the memories that the old bricks and mortar surely held.

It really was unfair that he couldn’t see the ghosts and I could.

But the courthouse, and all its bricks and mortar, did seem more interesting. And though I didn’t sense history seeping into my very self, I had a new respect for it—the building had seen Sally’s last days before she’d been locked up and then had died.

“Isabelle Winston,” a voice said.

I knew the voice and wasn’t in the mood to be friendly to the person attached to it, but I smiled and turned nonetheless.

“Hey, Opie,” I said to the approaching figure. I had a moment of déjà vu. With her time-correct dress and the big blond wig, Opie looked like a duplicate of the real Sally Swarthmore. I was impressed and would have complimented her if she’d been anyone else.

“Betts,” she said with a friendly tone to her voice. Something was up.

“Well, look at that, I thought I’d visit the old courthouse
and not only do I find you again, Betts, but it looks like another me is here, too. Am I really that…uh…that built?” Sally had appeared and was pointing at Opie’s pushed–up chest.

On second thought, the dresses weren’t as close a match as I’d thought. Sally’s dress covered all parts of her; Opie’s, not so much.

“What’s up, Opie?” I said, trying not to smile at Sally, who was posing like Opie and comparing herself to her impersonator.

“I’ve been thinking,” Opie said as she put her finger to the side of her head. “We should have lunch.”

We hadn’t had lunch together since elementary school. We used to throw food at each other.

“Why?” I said. I hadn’t meant to be rude, but it was a legitimate question. Sally laughed.

“Because,” Opie peered at me under a serious forehead, “we should try to become closer.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You know, since Teddy and I are—”

“Oh!” I interrupted. “That’s…” I wanted to say that it was okay that she and I weren’t friends, that I wasn’t accepting the fact that my brother would remain serious about her. He wasn’t serious about anyone. He went through women like Gram and I went through bacon grease. But that suddenly seemed too cruel even to say to her. I didn’t know if it was because she was dressed as Sally, the convicted ax murderer I was getting to know, or if on some level I thought she was right. Maybe since she was seeing Teddy, we should play nice. “A good idea,” I continued, sounding like I was trying to convince myself. “I’m so busy right now, though. Maybe in a few weeks?”

“Sure,” she said after a brief pause.

“She’s pretty,” Sally said. “Am I that pretty?”

I smiled at Sally, making Opie think I was smiling at someone to her side. She turned to see who was approaching. She smiled at a small group of tourists as they passed us.

“Very good. In a few weeks, then,” Opie said.

I took a step around her. “Great. We’ll talk.”

“Betts,” she added, “you are one of the few people I know who can mostly pull off the wet-hair, no makeup look, but Cliff’s back in town. You might want to put on a little lip gloss.”

“Thanks, Opie,” I said with a sigh. I really didn’t have the energy for this to become a heated discussion.

It would be different if I thought she didn’t know better, thought she was just being helpful. But I knew Opie, and I knew she’d just pulled off her favorite kind of dig—one that she delivered right after being mostly human.

Sally laughed again. “She’s interesting.”

“Gotta go,” I said.

“Hey, I’m going in to catch the show. I want to see how well she portrays me,” Sally said. “Please think about the Monroe House.”

I waved as I hurried toward Jake. Two Sallys at one time were really more than anyone should have to put up with.