Grave Undertaking (7 page)
The next morning I allowed extra time for the drive to town, but discovered I had the road to myself. Most county people were still digging out or taking care of the livestock whose winter grazing pastures lay smothered under a frozen barrier.
When I arrived at the funeral home early, Mom made an egg and sausage breakfast casserole, and we sat at the kitchen table with Dad. Our conversation consisted of sporadic threads that abruptly snapped and then veered off on whatever tangent next broke from his tangled memory.
Uncle Wayne and Freddy Mott arrived in time to finish the coffee and casserole and to hear Dad mix his recollection of JFK’s death with the current plot of “General Hospital.” Freddy had been with us part-time for over ten years. He also worked as a carpentry handyman, specializing in odd jobs for wealthy retirees, but with their understanding that his funeral duties took priority. Since most of his clients were at the stage of life when funerals were as common as an afternoon of golf or an evening of bridge, Freddy could juggle building and burying with their cooperation.
I studied the faces around the table. We worked well together, providing comfort and consolation to our community. Even Dad showed no signs of anxiety when the five of us were together. What impact would Hoffman Enterprises make on this scene?
My thoughts were interrupted by the ring of the phone. I motioned for Mom to keep her seat, and I grabbed the receiver from the wall. Susan recognized my voice.
“Can you talk a second? I’m between rounds.”
“Hold on.” I turned to Mom. “I’ll catch it in the office.”
She took the phone, ready to hang up when I came on the extension.
I closed the office door behind me. “Okay, Mom.” The kitchen line clicked off.
Susan said, “I telephoned Sheriff Ewbanks last night. The dispatcher took my name and said he’d track him down. Ewbanks called me back about midnight.”
“Was he surprised to hear from you?”
“Hard to say,” she said. “He was too angry.”
“At you?”
“At
NEWSCHANNEL-8
. The station broke the story about my father and the gun.”
“Did he think you called them?” I grabbed a pencil and started jotting words on my notepad—
Cassie
and
Ewbanks
.
“No. He wanted to know if any reporters had tried to reach me earlier. I said I’d only heard from my father.”
“Did he say anything about your picture being in Calhoun’s wallet?”
“He didn’t. And I couldn’t bring it up since I’m not supposed to know about it.”
“But you told him about Calhoun.”
“How I met him in New York and then how he followed me to Asheville. I volunteered the information about the gun.”
“What did he make of that?”
“Not much. He thanked me for contacting him.”
“So that’s that for now,” I said.
“That was that for last night,” she said. “This morning at six I got another call requesting me to go to Walker County for fingerprints. I told the officer I had two surgeries scheduled and that I couldn’t get there till early afternoon.”
The word
fingerprints
went on the pad with an underline. “I guess they just want to rule you out,” I assured her.
“You want to have dinner this evening?” she asked. “I’d like to talk.”
“Fine. Where?”
“My place. Just bring your appetite.”
We agreed on five-thirty. After I hung up, I realized I hadn’t told Susan about my conversation with Cassie. Just as well. I had more questions for Susan’s aunt, and I wouldn’t be asking them over the telephone.
Freddy and I spent the morning preparing Claude McBee’s body. Uncle Wayne met with the family, which had now grown to eight plus local Baptist preacher Calvin Stinnett. A funeral by committee. While Freddy and I pumped Claude full of embalming fluid, Wayne walked the entourage through the casket displays, encouraging the financially strapped family to choose from the lower-priced models without insinuating that they couldn’t afford the deluxe solid mahogany costing more than a room full of furniture. A compassionate funeral director protects mourners from emotionally overspending and makes them feel good about their economical choices. Uncle Wayne knew how to do that better than anyone.
By lunch, both the burial plans and Claude were in good shape. Visitation would be Friday night with the funeral at Crab Apple Valley Baptist Church set for one on Saturday afternoon.
After devouring a bowl of Mom’s beef stew with Wayne and Freddy, I told them I needed to drive to Asheville for office supplies. The thermometer had risen into the mid-forties and road conditions posed no problems. I could run by Office Depot and still be at the TV station by two. Cassie Miller would begin her day with an unexpected interview.
The studios and offices for Channel 8 perched halfway up one of the ridges surrounding Asheville in nearby Buncombe County. Higher above, on the ridge crest, the transmission tower rose majestically into the clouds, flashing red warnings along its vertical shaft of interlaced steel. Officially, the station was WHME-TV, “Where Heaven Meets Earth,” but the days of cable television and the hard-fought competition for local news viewers made such a picturesque slogan obsolete. Now it was simply
NEWSCHANNEL-8
, one word, the be-all, end-all mantra glorifying the six o’clock newscast. Cassie had told Susan that’s where the station made one third of its money. “Where your treasure is, your heart will follow,” the scriptures say. News was the heart of Channel 8, and Cassie Miller was the heart of the news.
I parked in a visitor’s spot along the iron picket fence which protected the employees’ cars and the millions of dollars of equipment rolling around in the
LIVE-EYE
vans. Channel 8 didn’t have a helicopter, but that was about the only piece of glitzy hardware missing from its news-gathering arsenal. I grabbed my cell phone from the charger on the jeep’s dash and clipped it to my belt. When in Rome, at least look like a Roman. No one in this communication citadel would take me seriously unless it appeared I needed to be constantly in touch with someone.
Security was tight at the visitor’s entrance. I entered one set of doors, and a receptionist behind a thick window asked if she could help me. Another set of glass doors barred access to the lobby until I could assure this electronic gatekeeper that I had legitimate business within.
“I’m Barry Clayton. I’m here to see Cassie Miller.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“Yes,” I lied. “She called me last night.”
A buzzer sounded and the doors automatically opened. I was surprised they hadn’t thought to add celestial music. The lobby was richly furnished with a large mahogany coffee table, burgundy leather sofa, and two matching wing chairs. On the walls, numerous award plaques and statuettes basked in the reverential glow of spotlights positioned in the high ceiling. The photographs of network celebrities mingled with those of the local wannabees who were either on their way up or on their way down.
I turned to the receptionist, whose desk was now clear of the bulletproof glass of the airlock.
“I’ve notified the newsroom,” she said. “Please have a seat.”
Before I could sit down, a young man entered the lobby from the far end. He wore a headset around his neck and carried the unplugged jack in his hand. “Did you just get here?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me, sir.”
Impressed with the
NEWSCHANNEL-8
efficiency, I followed my guide down a hall and through huge, wooden, double doors marked
STUDIO B
. We walked behind three cameras aimed at a living room set. The walls and fake fireplace were draped in Christmas ornaments, and an artificial tree in the corner shone with miniature white lights. A woman who looked vaguely familiar sat in a chair opposite two men. One of the men wore a clerical collar. An empty chair beside them had a microphone draped over its back.
A voice boomed through an invisible speaker, “Get him in place and miked. We’ve already got color bars. Rolling tape in forty-five seconds.”
The woman stood up, and our confused faces must have mirrored each other. “Who are you?”
“I’m Barry Clayton.”
“Did Dr. Elbertson send you? Isn’t he coming?”
“I’m here to see Cassie Miller.”
“But this is ‘Pastors Face Your Questions.’” Her eyes searched the studio beyond the glare of the lights. “Sid,” she yelled sharply. “I told you to meet Dr. Elbertson in the lobby. From Long Creek Baptist Bible College.”
“Barry, what the hell are you doing?” Cassie strolled onto the set as if it were her own living room. She was no more than an inch or two above five feet, barely higher than the cameras. Her dark pants suit hung loosely on her thin body, and she wore no jewelry other than gold hoops sparkling in her ears. Her short hair was shoe-polish brown and framed against a strong-boned face which revealed her sixty-one years only when it wrinkled in a wicked grin. She spoke to the reverends. “I’m sorry. He was supposed to come straight to the newsroom, but he’s a Pastors Face Your Questions groupie and has a thing for Charlene.”
The host, who I gathered was Charlene, flushed crimson. “Cassie. Really!”
“It’s the price you pay when you’re into public affairs, Charlene, dear. You are the best at public affairs. I’ll take care of the moonstruck boy for you.” She ceremoniously escorted me from the studio, and then broke into laughter as soon as we were in the scene shop and out of earshot. “That’ll chap Charlene all day. She’s such a god-damned prima donna.”
Cassie didn’t say anything else until she closed the door to her office. She motioned me to a chair and plopped down behind her cluttered desk. “Okay, why are you here? What’s going on?”
“You know more than I do. Who’s Sammy Calhoun?”
Cassie leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk and lightly touching the tips of her fingers together. Her eyes widened with the curiosity bred into every good reporter. “Why don’t you ask Susan?”
“For the same reason you called me last night,” I said sharply. “I want to know what’s going on, and the answers might be ones that I’d prefer to learn without Susan having to tell me. She and her father are too distracted and distraught to handle both a police investigation and the press leaks that are flooding your newsroom.”
“You really like her, don’t you,” she said. “Not exactly the match made in heaven, a surgeon and an undertaker.” She paused and smiled. “On second thought, it could be convenient. Okay, I’ll tell you about Sammy Calhoun, but you didn’t learn it from me. I think Susan is in love with you and prefers to keep private what is an embarrassing relationship from the past.”
“I’m just trying to understand how to help her. A skeleton doesn’t give me much to work with.”
A shudder rippled through Cassie’s body and I remembered the skeleton had once been a flesh and blood person to her.
“First of all, any mistakes Susan made were aided by my own stupidity,” Cassie said. “I had lived in Manhattan over thirty years when Susan came to the city. I took her on as a project.”
“Project?”
“Turn the mountain girl into a New Yorker.” She shook her head at the absurdity of her quest. “I was very proud of my niece. She’d not only left the hills like I had, but she was entering a prestigious medical school at twenty-two. My feminist battle flag proudly waved over my protégée, and I waltzed her around to impress as many of my friends as I could. One of them was Sammy Calhoun.”
“A private detective?”
The question must have carried a judgmental tone because Cassie scowled at me. “You’re an ex-cop,” she stated. “You know you make or break a case by getting information. Sammy was smooth and ingratiating. That was how he worked his sources. I didn’t stop to think that’s how he would work my niece.”
“She fell for him?”
“Like he was Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Susan had never had time for a boyfriend, not that her looks wouldn’t fetch a passel of guys with their tongues hanging out. She was focused on getting into med school. Sammy cut through all that at a time in her life when she began to look around. I had helped open her eyes and then put the wrong object in front of them.”
“Was he abusive?”
“No. Sammy was a user. Not drugs, people. Within three months, they were living together. Susan was carrying a full course load and waiting on him hand and foot. He’d turned my feminist charge into a school girl doting on a man ten years older.”
I had difficulty imagining Susan as fawning over anyone. Her independent mind was the defining trait of her personality.
“He must have been something.”
“Sammy was that all right. I guess he finally ran into someone he couldn’t charm.”
The intercom on the credenza behind her desk buzzed. “Cassie,” said a man’s voice.
“I’ve got someone with me,” she said, and punched a button blocking further interruptions.
“Did they break up before she left New York?”
“I gathered the relationship started to cool the last year of med school. When Susan came back to Asheville for her residency, Sammy had already returned to his old haunts. I used him on a few assignments. He was a good investigator. Knew surveillance and had all the latest high-tech gadgets.”