Chapter Seventeen

I GO TO THE BIG HOUSE

IT WASN’T HARD to find out where John Chisholm lived. It was a lot harder to actually get there. And it took a lot longer than I would have wished—forty-eight minutes on Maggie’s bicycle, to be exact—because Mr. Chisholm lived on a large farm outside of town. It had a red barn just like in a picture book, three silos, and a pickup in the driveway. East of the barn, separated from the barnyard by a tight row of mature poplars, was a large square, white-clapboard house with a red wraparound veranda and red gingerbread trim, its gabled windows gleaming in the afternoon sun, its lawn evenly mowed, its flower beds thick with blossoms. But the place looked deserted. The only person in sight was a man on a tractor at the far end of a field. He’d been made so small by distance that he looked like a toy man on a toy tractor. Was he Mr. Chisholm?

I climbed the verandah steps and rang the doorbell. A black woman in a cotton dress and a crisp white apron asked me for my name and my business and told me to wait. I stood on the porch and looked around until she returned to inform me that Mr. Chisholm would see me. We walked through a cool marble-floored front hall, past a massive living room with rugged, overstuffed furniture, mostly in leather, past a billiards room with a bar at one end and plenty of chairs for spectators, past what looked like a den or an office, through a sun-filled kitchen and out onto the back verandah, where a silver-haired man in khaki pants and a short-sleeved white shirt was sitting with his newspaper and a glass of what looked like lemonade. He turned expectantly when the door to the verandah opened and inspected me with unconcealed curiosity when he saw me. But, like a gentleman, he got to his feet and put a smile on his face.

“Miss Andrews, is it?” He extended his hand. “John Chisholm. Please sit and tell me what I can do for you.” To the woman: “Alice, please get some lemonade for Miss Andrews. She looks parched.”

A glass of frosty lemonade sounded like heaven. Even on a bike, the trip from town had been hot and dusty. The woman was back only seconds later with a glass that clinked with ice. I drank as much as I could get away with in polite company without appearing greedy. I hated to set down the glass unfinished, but Mrs. Hazelton had drilled certain ladylike practices into us. Never start eating before the host or hostess. Take small bites. Don’t slurp your soup or drink it directly from the bowl. Don’t gulp your milk (or lemonade). The whole time, Mr. Chisholm waited patiently and watched me with a bland face. But his eyes never left me, even when he reached for the silver cigarette case, buffed to a blinding finish, sitting on the small table between us. He took out a cigarette and lit it with a tabletop silver-and-crystal lighter, the kind that people display proudly on a shelf or end table. His white shirt and crisp pants were spotless. His cream-and-tan shoes were buffed and mark-free. His hair was swept back from his forehead. His clean-shaven face was smooth and pinkish. And the house! The house stretched to either side of me and looked out over a freshly manicured lawn. At its farthest extremes were magnificent shade trees that must have been planted at least a century ago.

“It’s about your daughter,” I said. There was a slight tremor in my voice. His wealth and standing in the community were intimidating.

“That much I gathered from Alice,” he said. “But why are you interested in her? You didn’t know her, and she passed a long time ago.” He said it pleasantly, and if he looked perplexed, well, I understood.

“I’m doing some research.”

“On that murder, the one involving the colored serviceman. I know.” So he had heard about me. “But that doesn’t explain why you want to ask about my daughter.”

He set down his cigarette, pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his eyes.

“Excuse me.” He didn’t offer to explain, but he didn’t have to. Not only had a stranger turned up uninvited at his house, but that stranger—me—was asking about a painful past. He had already been a widower when his daughter died. Because of that, I felt I owed him an explanation.

But what could I say? Where should I start? The part about why I was writing the story? The part about me being an orphan? The part about Mrs. Hazelton and her envelopes? And what if Ellie Chisholm had been like Anne Tyler? What if she’d sneaked down to the Rooster and her father never suspected? What if, after mourning her for so long, imagining her in all her perfection, I told him something that marred that picture? How much would he hurt then?

Mr. Chisholm gazed out over his magnificent lawn.

“She was a quiet girl,” he said. “Like her mother. Sweet too. Always considerate of others. I sent her away to a school with the nuns. To keep her safe.”

His eyes seemed fixed on a point in the distance, as if it were the exact location of the piece of history he was telling me now.

“It was the same school her mother went to. It’s not far from here, but far enough that she stayed there most weekends and engaged in wholesome activities, unlike so many youngsters around here at the time. I was going to send her to Switzerland, to a finishing school, but that didn’t happen.”

He turned to look at me.

“I’ve wondered many times over the years if I shouldn’t have kept her at home. Family tradition is well and good, but at the end of the day, all it meant is that I hardly ever saw her. My most enduring memories of her are as a little girl, before she left for school. It wasn’t until after she died that I realized I’d never gotten to know her as the fine young lady she was becoming.”

“I’m sorry.” I really was. I thought of leaving it at that. You bet I did. How do you ask a man if his sainted daughter, his nun-reared darling, associated with the victim of the first and last murder case in decades? Believe it or not, that’s when Nellie flashed into my mind. I thought about all the things she had done, all the questions she had asked, all the people she had tracked down and interviewed, all with one purpose: to get the story.

I drew in a deep breath. “Sir, do you know if your daughter was friendly with a man named LaSalle?”

“LaSalle?” He shook his head. “The only LaSalle I know—and even then I can’t say that I knew the man—was the fellow they found in the river. The one who was murdered. I can’t remember his given name.”

“It was Patrice. He’s the person I mean.”

Mr. Chisholm frowned. “My Ellie had nothing to do with him. She would never have had anything to do with a murder victim.” He made it sound as if the victim were every bit as reprehensible as the killer.

“She never mentioned his name?”

“Not that I recall. Certainly not.”

I took another sip of lemonade to be polite and then stood up.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, sir.”

“Is that it?” His voice rose in surprise. “Is that all you wanted to know?” Suddenly he was on his feet, towering over me. His pink cheeks had turned red. “Who are you doing this research for? Who’s paying you? Why are you asking about my daughter?”

“I just—” I just what? Liked sticking my nose into other people’s business and stirring up painful memories?

“My daughter died tragically young.” He stepped a half pace closer to me, crowding me, but I couldn’t make myself step back. “I spent a lifetime building a business so that I could give her everything she needed. She wanted for nothing, and I intended to keep it that way. Then she died. She’d just turned nineteen. She was a child. My baby girl.”

Every reflex I had was telling me to leave, immediately, that I never should have come here and upset this man. But I was overawed by the size and opulence of his home. Should I go back the way I had come, through the house? Or would that get me into more trouble? Should I flee across the lawn? I couldn’t tell for sure, but a garage seemed to be blocking one side, and flower beds the other.

Mr. Chisholm settled the matter. He picked up a bell; it looked like a schoolteacher’s bell, the kind that Mrs. Hazelton rang to assemble us, except it was silver. He shook it and, like a genie in a puff of smoke, Alice appeared.

“Please see Miss Andrews out,” Mr. Chisholm said.

Alice looked disapprovingly at me. It was clear that I had upset her employer. I wanted to apologize to Mr. Chisholm, but I couldn’t find words that seemed adequate for the job. I fell into step beside Alice. She marched me through the kitchen, down the hall and to the big front door. I thought about explaining to her what had happened. But suddenly we were at the door. Alice held it open for me, her stance making it clear that she was in a hurry to close it again.

The ride back to town seemed longer and hotter than the ride to Mr. Chisholm’s farm, and I berated myself for not drinking all of the lemonade before leaving. I couldn’t help but wonder how the others from the Home were doing. Had any of them followed their clues to a living, breathing parent? Had any of them had a joyous reunion? Did they like what they’d found out? Were they glad they’d looked? Even if they were, that didn’t mean that I would be. And what good did it do to think about that anyway? Take off your orphan hat, I told myself, and put on Nellie Bly’s bonnet. Think, Cady. What are the facts as you know them?

I had more questions than answers.

All files relating to the arrest and prosecution of Thomas Jefferson were missing. By all files, I meant all the newspaper files and all the police files, except for the photos that were delivered to me at Maggie’s house. I couldn’t prove it, but the more I thought about it, the more sure I was that it was the cleaning woman from the sheriff’s office who had brought them. But where had she found them if all the files were destroyed in the flood back in 1949?

Then there were the photos themselves. They suggested a different story from the one I had been told. They made it clear that Mr. LaSalle’s body wasn’t anchored to the pulley with rope. It was attached by cable. Cable doesn’t rot or get nibbled by fish or fray to the point of breaking as a result of rubbing against rocks in a river. Whoever put that cable around Patrice LaSalle before they dumped him into the river wanted him to stay hidden in the depths, not float to the surface. The other thing about the cable: I didn’t see how it could have been broken, not the way it looked. The photos showed a neat cut, not a ragged break. Someone must have cut that cable. But who? And why? And why did everyone insist that the body had been held in place by rope?

What about the confession? The only person who had supposedly heard it was Sheriff Beale. And even though the sheriff couldn’t produce a signed confession in court and, more important, even though Mr. Jefferson insisted he had never confessed, the judge allowed the sheriff’s testimony about it to be admitted as evidence against Mr. Jefferson. Maybe Mr. Jefferson’s lawyer had done his best to present his case, but from what Daniel had told me, it didn’t sound like it. If I could have read the trial transcript, I would have known exactly what had been said and by whom. But the transcript, like everything else, was missing. Without it, I had no way of knowing how impartial—or not—the trial had been.

And then there was the fact that several people had told me Mr. Jefferson had gone around town after Mr. LaSalle went missing, asking people if they’d seen him. Why would he do that if he’d already killed Mr. LaSalle? Why make a point of his absence? Why not just say that Mr. LaSalle had gone home to Canada?

And, finally, there was Sheriff Beale himself, the only person who’d heard Mr. Jefferson’s supposed confession, living out his days in a nursing home complete with a private nurse that he couldn’t afford. What, if anything, did that have to do with his testimony and with the missing police files? Were his bills being paid in return for perjured testimony or for making sure that key documents went missing?

Put all those facts together, and they raised yet another question—a big one: If Mr. Jefferson didn’t murder Mr. LaSalle, who did? And why?

Was Mr. LaSalle killed simply to frame Mr. Jefferson for murder? If so, the killer had to be someone who hated that Mr. Jefferson, a black man, wanted to be treated like everyone else. A lot of people had complained about that. Mr. Selig had all but foamed at the mouth.

Or had someone killed Mr. LaSalle because they didn’t like that he was friends with Mr. Jefferson? That couldn’t be it, could it? This wasn’t the south. As far as I knew, Indiana had never had slavery. So how could it be such a crime for two people with different-colored skin to be friends and go into business together?

I didn’t have any answers.

But suppose Daniel and his mother were right. Suppose Mr. Jefferson hadn’t killed Mr. LaSalle. Suppose someone else had done it. Someone like Mr. Selig. Or like the men who had followed me back to Maggie’s. And suppose Mr. Jefferson had been mistakenly arrested or—this was also possible—suppose he’d been framed. Suppose certain evidence had been destroyed and other evidence manufactured—to make Mr. Jefferson look guilty. Wouldn’t Sheriff Beale have to have been involved in that? If he was, and if he had any files or photographs or other information about what had really happened, he wouldn’t have kept them in police files. That would have been foolhardy. And if that was true…

Was I being logical? Or was I grasping at straws because I wanted to believe Mrs. Jefferson and Daniel and because I didn’t like the way some people in town talked about Mr. Jefferson? It was so confusing.

If Sheriff Beale had helped to cover up the truth about Patrice LaSalle’s murder, and if Mrs. Jefferson was right when she insisted that Mr. Jefferson had never confessed, that meant Sheriff Beale had lied on the witness stand. A sheriff who would lie under oath might do a lot of other unsavory things. He might also take measures to make sure that no one would ever point the finger at him. He might have kept some information as insurance. Maybe he’d even used it to make sure that he was well rewarded for what he had done. It was possible. If he had, where would that information be now?

Did he take it home? He had a house in town. Mr. Standish had told me so. But where was it? Who would know? Who could I ask?

How about Sheriff Hicks? He would know.

I went back to the sheriff’s office and found his secretary, two police officers doing paperwork, and the cleaning lady. Sheriff Hicks wasn’t there. I approached his secretary instead and asked for Sheriff Beale’s address.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t help you.”

“You don’t know where his house is?”

“I don’t give out personal information.”

“But he doesn’t live there anymore.”

“I don’t give out personal information.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked implacably at me. She was not going to budge.

I glanced at the two police officers at their desks behind her. They both looked away immediately. They were going to be no help either.