Winter's Child

“You know, bo, when Jonna walked away with Cal yesterday, I thought maybe she was just ticked off at you for something. And yeah, I put my people through the motions for you, but it was a slow day and there wasn’t much going on here.”

He hesitated.

“But now?” Dwight prodded.

“But now I’ve got to say, whatever Jonna’s up to, it doesn’t feel normal. My chief clerk grew up here. Her dad was coroner when she was a kid so she knows a lot of the stuff the town tries to keep quiet. She put me onto this.” He tapped the open folder that lay on the desk in front of him. “Did you know that Jonna’s daddy shot himself?”

Dwight nodded. “Yeah. She told me about it. She was just a baby when it happened, though, and I don’t think her mother ever wanted to talk about it much. He was cleaning a gun and didn’t know it was loaded, right?”

“That was the official story that got in the paper,” said Radcliff. “You might want to read between the lines of these.”

Radcliff slid the folder over to Dwight. In addition to the autopsy report, there were several written statements collected by the officers who had worked the incident nearly forty years ago, when the sudden death of one of the town’s most prominent businessmen would have been a noteworthy event. Not that there was anything suggestive in the one clipping that detailed the “tragic accident.”

The police reports were a different matter. His doctor stated that Eustace Shay had been subject to bouts of depression for years, which probably contributed to his poor business decisions, which led to losing control of Shay Furniture.

According to his secretary’s statement, he had been asked to vacate his corner office so that the new president could move in. On that day, he had overseen the packing up of his belongings, and she had stepped out to fetch someone to carry down the heavy boxes while he saw to the last of his personal items. “I had barely closed the door when I heard a gun go off and rushed back in.”

That part was supported by other workers in the office.

They did not support her assertion that he had been laughing and joking about early retirement and how he was 8 planning to spend his first week of freedom fishing for bass out at the lake. When asked if suicide was a possibility, however, the others had apparently more or less shrugged, while the secretary was adamant that “Mr. Shay would never do that to his wife and those sweet baby girls.”

Jonna’s mother had agreed. Yes, her husband had been upset about business but she certainly did not think he was that upset. The gun? A family heirloom that her husband had enjoyed displaying. “I’m sure we never realized it was loaded.”

Dwight closed the folder. “Interesting, but I don’t—”

“Did you see the gun he used?”

Dwight flipped back through the reports. “An old Colt revolver?”

“Not just any old Colt revolver. It was a silver-plated, engraved presentation piece given to Peter Morrow for using his influence to spare Shaysville the worst of Reconstruction. It’s also the same gun Edward Morrow used to kill himself in 1931.”

“Huh?”

“My clerk says that her dad and the guy who was police chief back then managed to keep that little fact out of the papers because they didn’t want to sensationalize things. As soon as I heard that, I called the Morrow House director at his house.”

“Mayhew? Jonna’s boss?”

Radcliff nodded. “That’s where the gun is now. According to Mayhew, Jonna’s mother inherited it from her father and she was real proud of it even though her own granddaddy had shot himself with it. After Mr. Shay’s death, she decided it was cursed and wanted to destroy it.

Mayhew says it took a lot of talking, but the Historical So- ciety eventually persuaded her to give it to the Morrow House. It’s on display out there now, but of course there’s nothing on the card to tell that the gun was ever fired.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Dwight asked his friend.

Radcliff’s eyes dropped and he hesitated for a moment.

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, Dwight, but my clerk says her dad used to say there was talk that Eustace Shay was a little unstable even before he accidentally-maybe-on-purpose shot himself. His mother was reputed to be a little bit odd herself, used to wander around talking to people who weren’t there. And some say Jonna’s sister’s not all that tightly wired either. ’Course, that may be because she’s something of an alcoholic.”

Dwight immediately saw where Radcliff was heading and shook his head. “And you’re thinking Jonna’s come unglued, too?”

His friend shrugged. “Well, she’s sure not acting normal, is she?”

Before Dwight could argue that he’d never seen any signs of mental instability in his ex-wife, Radcliff’s phone rang. The chief had barely identified himself when Dwight heard a loud excited voice practically screaming through the earpiece.

“Slow down!” Radcliff said. “You’re not making sense.” He listened intently, then said, “Stay put. We’ll be right out.”

He pushed himself up from the desk. “You’d better come, too. That was Mayhew. That damn gun and two others have gone missing from their display case.”

C H A P T E R

9

The constant statements by the older people, that the winterswere colder or the summers hotter