I put my phone down and stared at Malachi in disbelief. He stared back, wanting to ask questions, but waiting for me to offer up the answers he sought. However, I didn’t know where to begin. My great-uncle, who had to be older than dirt, had miraculously arrived in Columbia, Missouri and one of my cousins had gone to collect the old man.
The impression had always been that Virgil Clachan was dead. To find him alive and kicking, was a shock. It was even more shocking that someone in the family knew Virgil Clachan wasn’t dead.
The story, as I had heard it, was that Virgil had been killed when he was fifteen years old. The manner of death had never been discussed and I had assumed he was killed by someone in the family. To learn that he had been shipped to relatives out of the state because Gertrude, at six years old, had accused him of molesting her was a shock. An even greater shock was that no one believed Gertrude, even then. For the first time, I wished I was closer to someone in my father’s family so that I could call them and find out the details. So, I called my mom instead.
“What do you mean Virgil Clachan is alive and in Columbia?” My mother asked after I had told her. Malachi danced in his seat across from me. It was another layer in the sordid Clachan family that he was curious about.
“I mean he was picked up at the Broadway Diner after helping stop a fight and Chub’s son, Carl, went to the station and collected him.”
“That’s not possible.” My mother scoffed.
“He told the police that he was sent away because Gertrude made his life miserable, despite being only six years old.”
“That I believe. She accused all the boys of molesting her, even Fritz.”
“Who’s Fritz?” I asked.
“Uncle Chub,” my mother answered. So, he did have a first name. That was good to know. “Fritz was the most well-adjusted of the bunch.”
“So, why is it impossible?”
“Because Virgil wasn’t killed for messing with his sister,” my mother stopped. “Trust me, he’s dead.”
“What do you know?” I asked.
“It’s just gossip, honey, but that isn’t Virgil. I don’t know who he is, but he isn’t Virgil.”
“Mom.”
My mother gave a long, heavy sigh and hung up on me. I stared at my phone. It was always surprising to be hung up by my mother. She was strong, determined, and willing to protect me, but she was also very kind, very easy going and very, well, mom-ish.
“Well?” Malachi asked.
“Mom says it cannot be Virgil.”
“The police checked out his story, it all checks out.”
“I cannot help that. Mom says Virgil is definitely deceased. I do not know why or how, but she was fairly adamant about it.”
Records indicated that Virgil Clachan had started a construction company in 1946 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He’d retired to Florida in the late 1980’s. He was worth millions. He’d never married, never had children and my cousin had vouched that he was indeed Virgil Clachan. Malachi pulled something up on his tablet. He turned and showed it to me.
The driver’s license picture was of an older man with dark hair, blue eyes and smile lines. His ears were normal sized, his nose was normal sized and while he didn’t appear to be 94 years old, that was common in my family. Gertrude looked old because she was frumpy, but even with liver cancer, Nina hadn’t looked more than sixty, despite being in her eighties. Dark hair and blue eyes also ran in the family. I stared at the picture for few more minutes and sighed, there was a problem.
“It’s not Patterson,” I told Malachi.
“Why?”
“I have brown eyes,” I answered. “My mom has blue, which means my dad had to have brown. If you look at pictures of my grandmother, she also had blue eyes. That means that Patterson Clachan has brown eyes. However, Uncle Chub, Aunt Nina and Gertrude all had blue eyes, so it does run in the family. The man posing as Virgil has blue eyes, he cannot be Patterson. But if he is not Patterson and he is not Virgil, I do not know who he is.”
“Could you have another great uncle you don’t know about?”
“No.” I answered. “Nina and Gertrude were the youngest. Sometime in the early 1940’s, someone walked into my great grandparents’ house and shot both of them. They then took a knife and stabbed my great grandfather seventy-two times. Nina was suspected, she still lived at home, but no one could prove she’d done it. Or find a motive for the killing. Everyone else was married by then. I suspect it was Patterson.”
“But are you positive that Nina and Gertrude were the youngest?”
“As positive as I can be.”
“Why would he resurface now?” Malachi stretched out his long legs.
“Because Gertrude’s in custody. It could bring out lots of whack jobs. Virgil was never found, he was officially listed as a missing person for the last eighty years. The Clachans have money, lots of it, squirreled away in a trust to be used by one generation at a time. With Gertrude in custody, the money would pass to the next generation, but if Virgil is alive, he gets to draw on it. But why would he if he’s worth millions?” I thought about that. “And how did the trust get as large as it has gotten? The family was dirt poor during The Depression, they were eating people to get by.”
“You want to follow the money?” Malachi asked.
“Yeah, I think I do.” I answered. “It seems illogical for there to be money after The Depression, but not before.”
Malachi began working on his tablet. He wasn’t as good as Michael had been, but he was better than me at using government databases. His fingers swiped the screen, making no noise, just moving quickly. There was something to be said for that, it wasn’t nearly as annoying as the clacking of keys on a keyboard.
“Interesting,” Malachi leaned back in his chair. “The trust was started in 1942, by a Bernard Clachan.”
“He was a great uncle, dead now.”
“He started it with nearly $500,000.”
“That is a whole lot of money for a soldier. Especially in the ‘40’s.”
“It is, but he seems to have used his wages well, investing in the recovering stock market, mostly in munition companies. Then in 1946, regular deposits start getting made by none other than Virgil Clachan. At first, the amounts are small, a thousand here, two thousand there, but after 1957, the amounts start getting much larger, $200,000 or so at a time. Then Fritz begins making deposits during the 1970’s after investing in a start-up department store. It seems he got in on the ground floor. The conditions of the trust are as such, money is doled out to people over fifty-five, anyone disabled, or a one-time withdraw can be made with two approved signatures for anyone in the family. So, if you needed money, let’s say $300,000 you could get it, if you got two of your cousins to sign off on it.” Malachi shook his head. “Virgil is well off, but there’s about a hundred million dollars in this family trust. And other people have been making donations as well, including Nyleena, most of your cousins, and your mother. It actually looks like a tithing. Everyone seems to be donating ten percent of their yearly income.”
“Wow,” I settled into a chair and thought about that. “Does Patterson have access?”
“No.”
“So, that’s not how he’s getting his money.”
“I think we should pay your Great Uncle Virgil a visit. We’ll get you released from the hospital and head to Columbia. Maybe he can shed some light on Patterson.”
“In 1935, Patterson was nine years old.”
“And Nina said he was already a killer.”
“Huh,” I hadn’t considered that. “There’s the motive for the murder of my great grandparents, although it kind of eliminates Patterson as a suspect.”
“Yes, and it makes Nina the prime suspect again.”
“All things considered, maybe patricide was not such a bad thing in this case. If he was using Patterson to kill the farm hands, it would sort of justify someone killing him.”
“Why not kill him at the time?”
“Because they were all too young. Virgil was the oldest and he was born in 1920. Chub and Bernard were next, then a girl I don’t know, then Patterson, then the twins; Gertrude and Nina.”
“What unknown girl?” Malachi asked.
“She died when she was only a year or so old,” I told Malachi. “I do not even know her name.”
“That’s a lot of kids in eight years.”
“There are a few with less than a year between them. Bernard and Chub were ten months apart. The girl and Patterson were only eleven months apart. I think there was sixteen months between Bernard and the girl.”
“Why’d they stop after the twins?” Malachi asked.
“Female problems arose,” I shrugged having no idea what that meant, but that’s what I had been told.
“Well, Virgil would be in his nineties. We should go before he keels over.”
“Bernard was in his nineties,” I frowned. “The ages do not line up. Virgil cannot be the oldest, Chub was in his eighties when he died and I was a teen then. Bernard died of complications from surgery a few years ago. What the hell?”
“A case of misdirection? Who told you how old everyone was?”
“Nina,” I sighed. “Ok, so Bernard was in his nineties when he died. Chub was in his eighties. They would have to be the oldest boys and at least one would have had to have been born before 1920.”
“Your family is an enigma.”
“My family is the epitome of dysfunction. They hide everything, reveal only a few tantalizing clues, and leave the rest to the imagination. See if someone can find birth records on them.”
“I’m not your flunky.”
“Fine, see if Rollins can find birth records on them. We should probably fly to Columbia, we’ve already wasted a lot of time here.”