“You had quite a time last night over at Trinity.” Judge Jane pushed the document aside and leaned forward on her elbows. “Henry Burke caught the doer yet?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s early times. I hear they broke poor Lacey’s biscuit jar.”
“The green glass thing she was buried in? Unfortunately. Do you know the story behind that?”
“I know where it came from,” the judge said. “It was just about the one thing Lacey wanted when our grandmother died and we all went over to share out her possessions. No idea why she liked it so much. And definitely no idea she was planning to be buried in it. Of course, that was a good fifty years ago. She could have come up with the burying idea much later. Lord knows where I’m going to find another one like it.”
I was startled for a moment—why would she want another one like it? Then I realized she was thinking about reburying Lacey’s ashes in the same container. Well, presumably it was what Lacey would have wanted.
“Was the jar an antique?” I asked.
“Must have been,” she said. “In my earliest memories of Gran’s kitchen, that jar was always there, full of cookies. And I’m nearly an antique now, so the jar must have been. Depression glass, I think they call it. I have no idea if it’s valuable—I’ve got enough old things around the house without buying more. But I guess I’ll find out.”
“Since it’s an antique, I can sic Mother on it,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll have no problem finding one.”
“Kind of you,” she said. “And I won’t say no to her expert help.”
“It’s only fair.” I took out my notebook and jotted a note about the biscuit jar. “Robyn asked me to talk to the next of kin of all the people whose ashes were disturbed, to see what they want done about reburial.”
“Ah, so that’s your angle.” She laughed and shook her head. “I just figured your curiosity was getting the better of you and you were butting into Henry Burke’s case to see what you could find out.”
“I won’t pretend I’m going to ignore any evidence that would help the chief if I came across it,” I said.
“Or if you can hunt it down,” Judge Jane added.
“But he was okay with my talking to the next of kin as soon as possible. Randall and I figured either you were Lacey’s next of kin or you’d know who was.”
“I reckon I am. I was her executor, at any rate. I was the one who had to talk Maudie Morton into putting her ashes in that green glass jar, and break the news to the family that there wasn’t going to be any funeral or even graveside services. There was hard feeling over that, I can tell you. But she laid out what she wanted in her will—bossiest will I’ve ever seen, if you want to know. She made her wishes known, and I did my best to carry them out.”
“I’m glad to know she didn’t quarrel with her whole family.”
“She came damned close,” Judge Jane said. “She had such promise and she ended up leading such a sad, lonely … useless life. I know that sounds harsh, and maybe she was perfectly happy in her own way, but—just damn. Hearing someone had disturbed her grave just brought it all up again.”
“What was her story, anyway?”
“She was pretty as a picture and whip-smart.” Judge Jane settled back in her chair with faraway eyes and a half smile. “And an only child, which was a big part of the problem. A lot better for everyone if Aunt Ida’d had a dozen or so kids to spread out all her energy on, but there was just Lacey. Aunt Ida and Uncle Ferd wanted Lacey to go to college, which wasn’t exactly usual for girls in our family back then. They pushed too hard and she was going through a rebellious phase. I always thought if they’d given her an ultimatum that she had to find a job or a husband, she’d have moved heaven and earth to get to college. But instead she took up with Anse Whicker. A handsome devil, but already a troublemaker. And an ex-con to boot. If you ask me, she looked around to see who she could drag home to her parents that would hurt them the most and settled on Anse. And again, if they’d gritted their teeth and said ‘that’s nice, dear,’ she’d have gotten bored with him. Instead, they wept and wailed and threatened to turn her out of the house, and she and Anse eloped.”
“Yikes.” I found myself remembering a few of my own youthful rebellions, which my parents had handled with grace, aplomb, and stoic patience. I wasn’t sure I’d have gone as far as Lacey, but still, maybe I’d had some narrow escapes.
“And if you ask me, Lacey figured out what a disaster the marriage was pretty quickly, but she wasn’t ever one to admit her mistakes. She held her head up and stuck by Anse. I’ve always suspected it was a relief to her when they sent him off to prison. She stayed loyal and visited him every week for a couple of years, but finally she’d had enough. Divorced him and moved back to Caerphilly.”
“And continued to annoy her family by defecting to the Episcopalian church,” I put in.
“You could be right.” She shook her head and chuckled. “I’ve always thought the family was a little too happy to say ‘I told you so!’ and ‘thank goodness you’ve come to your senses!’ If everyone could have just kept their traps shut and started including her in all the family doings, I think things would have been different. She dropped her unsuitable Clay County friends, but she didn’t come back and reconcile with her old ones, either.”
“Instead she made a third set.”
“She may have, but I never met any of them. Didn’t hear any complaints about the lack of a funeral from anyone but family. I think she just became a recluse. And I bet I can think of a reason why whoever vandalized Trinity would pick on her resting place.”
“Do tell.”
“After she moved back here, she got a bee in her bonnet about the jewel robbery. Thought Mrs. Van der Lynden had buried the jewels somewhere on her property. She kept sneaking over there in the middle of the night with a metal detector, hunting for them. Which didn’t set well with the new owner of the property. The crazy lady who eventually sold it to that Viking musician.”
“Mrs. Winkleson,” I said. “Who sold it to Ragnar Ragnarsen.”
“That’s the one. The Winkleson woman kept calling the sheriff on Lacey. I finally convinced Lacey to back away for a while. Let the old bat settle down.”
“And did she? Lacey, I mean—did she back off?”
“She did. This would have been six, maybe eight months before she died. If you ask me, she’d have started up again before too long—she was getting restless. Kept dropping by and complaining to me about how unfair it was for Mrs. Winkleson to keep her from her treasure hunt. But she died before she had a chance to start looking again. And maybe someone didn’t understand the reason she quit looking.”
“You mean maybe someone thought she’d stopped because she found was she was looking for.”
Judge Jane nodded.
“Any chance they’re right?” I asked. “That she let you talk her into stopping because she’d already found the treasure.”
“I like the way your mind works,” she said. “Reminds me a lot of mine. Yes, that did occur to me. I also considered that maybe the reason she was so gung ho about the treasure being somewhere on the old Van der Lynden place was that she’d found something there—something she thought was a little part of the treasure. Crazy idea, maybe.”
“Doesn’t sound that crazy to me.”
“As I said, I was her executor, so it was up to me to clear out the little bungalow where she lived. Did every bit of it myself, and I left no possible hiding place untouched. If she ever found any part of the Van der Lynden treasure, she must have sold it and kept no record of the sale.”
“What prison was Lacey’s husband in?” Not the sort of detail most people would remember after all this time, and about someone else’s estranged husband to boot, but I was hoping Judge Jane would have taken a professional interest in that kind of thing.
“He started out in the James River Correctional Institution over in Goochland County,” she said promptly. “But then they moved him up to Coffeewood up in Culpeper shortly after that opened. Both medium security institutions. Why?”
“Did you read that article in the Clarion six months ago about the thirtieth anniversary of the jewel robbery?”
“Bit of a puff piece, but yes.”
“Fred didn’t mention it in the article but he checked on the whereabouts of the surviving players. The ringleader of the robbers was at Coffeewood at the time. I have no idea whether his path could have crossed with Anse Whicker’s.”
“But that would be an interesting thing to find out. There were four of them who did time for the robbery, in fact; even better odds that Whicker could have been in touch with one of them.”
“I’ll mention it to the chief,” I said. “I’m sure he can find that out.”
“If you mention it, mention I’ll be contacting the prison authorities to request full information on the prisoners involved,” Judge Jane said. “They tend to jump higher and work faster when it’s a judge doing the asking. And I can let him know what I learn. So, just so we can tell Henry we took care of what you came for, let’s go over what I want done about Lacey’s reburial.”
“I’m all ears.” I held my notebook up so she could see it, and kept my pen at the ready.
“If you could ask your mother to find a nice replacement for the biscuit jar, I’d appreciate it. She can drop it off with Maudie Morton at the funeral home. And I will be reimbursing her; I have a strict rule about not accepting gifts from anyone who could ever come up before me in court.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Once Lacey’s ashes are no longer part of the crime scene, I’d appreciate it if you could arrange for Maudie to pick them up, put them in a suitable temporary container, and hang on to them until your mother finds us a new biscuit jar. Then once the case is solved, and the notoriety has died down, and Robyn is back on her feet, we’ll pop Lacey back into her niche. I might invite a few people to help me see her on her way, and if Robyn wants to say a few suitable words, that’s fine with me. Will that cover it?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “I assume if the front panel of the niche is damaged or destroyed, we should just replace it with an exact duplicate.”
“Make it so.”
“I hope all the next of kin are this easy to please.” I tucked my notebook in my tote bag and stood up. “And now I’m going to let you get on with your day. I expect you have cases to hear.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Crime may not pay, but that doesn’t keep the local idiots from trying. My best to your family. And on your way out, tell Cal it’s time to get this show on the road.”
I passed the word along to Cal, the bailiff. I looked around for a quiet corner in which to make my calls to Mother, and maybe the chief. But in this part of the building, every quiet corner was already filled. Defendants conferring with their lawyers. Prosecutors bargaining with defense attorneys. People calling their workplaces and families to complain that they’d be stuck here a while longer.
I headed upstairs for the quieter corridor in which I had my office.
Mother answered my call on the first ring.
“Meg, dear. I was just about to call you. Robyn would like to see you.”