more officers going over Benton’s house with a metal detector to try and locate the guns they presumed he’d hidden.
The trustees were also out in full force and so were members of the Shaysville Historical and Genealogical Society. Having decided that Nathan Benton was a thief and a murderer, they were now on the trail of something even larger in their eyes.
“That little company he was supposed to have sold before he retired here?” said Suzanne Angelo. “My husband made a few phone calls. He was the manager, not the owner.”
“
“Now why would he lie about something like that?” I asked.
“For the same reason he stole things to give to the house,” said Betty Ramos, who seemed to have a kind heart. “He’s such a Civil War buff, I think he wanted to claim a part of that history as his own. He probably came across Bartholomew Benton’s name when he was re-searching his family tree and decided that sounded like a more interesting background than his own Bentons. Or maybe he couldn’t trace his own line very far back and since there were no more Bentons over here in Shaysville, 31 thought he could get away with saying our Bentons were his. Certainly today is the first time anyone’s questioned the lineage he presented. Why would we? Unless someone claims to be related to Robert E. Lee or Washington or Lincoln, who would bother to go look up all the deeds and wills and census records he cited?”
I’ve never quite understood why some people brag about their family being here since the Revolution. I mean, so have mine, so have a ton of others. The way Americans intermarry, almost anybody who’s been here three or four generations has at least one line that goes back that far. Maybe if I had more statesmen and officers perched in my family tree, I’d brag, too, but with so many bootleggers and dirt farmers and ancestors who did their best to avoid becoming cannon fodder no matter who was issuing the call to arms, it’s hard for me to work up much pride about it.
Pride.
Pride kept Mrs. Shay from getting Pam the help she needed.
Pride had probably spurred Jonna to blackmail because she couldn’t bring herself to tell her friends she didn’t have five thousand for a class gift.
And then there was the dangerous pride of Nathan Benton, who had fashioned himself into a blue-blooded big fish in a very small pond.
Not that anyone connected with the Morrow House suspected blackmail. No, their assumptions made Jonna an innocent victim.
“It’s too bad she didn’t turn him in as soon as she realized what he’d done,” said Suzanne Angelo. “She was probably going to let him withdraw his donations and return them to their rightful owners.”
“Or else she caught him stealing the guns, too,” said one of the other trustees. “Remember how he didn’t want to invite Hamilton Erdman to come and address Sunday’s meeting? We thought he was jealous of Erdman’s reputation as a small arms expert, but I bet he took all three guns because he was afraid that the two he’d donated might be recognized.”
In the office, a state police officer was going through Jonna’s computer files one by one to see if there was anything else to incriminate Benton, but she obligingly printed out another copy of Cal’s records for me as I found my phone and tucked it in my coat pocket.
“Glad to see you’re okay today, Judge,” said Agent Lewes, who was in the main hall when I came out to leave. Dwight and I agreed that he reminded us both of one of Daddy’s droopy-faced hounds, and today more than ever when he admitted that it didn’t look as if they were going to be able to charge Benton with Jonna’s murder. But while we stood talking in the entry hall, his phone buzzed and a big smile lit up those baggy eyes.
“Got him!” he said when the call ended. “There was a second spare in the trunk of his car—so old and beat up, it looked like something he was taking to the dump, but when Clark took it out to lift up the mat, he felt something rattle. There’s a slit in the tread just long enough to let him pull it apart and slide stuff inside. Long as they were just shifting the tire from one side of the trunk to the other, nobody noticed. We’ve got the guns, the cartridges, and the jewelry, too. Let’s see the bastard talk his way out of this!”
C H A P T E R
34
Jonna’s funeral was at ten o’clock Tuesday morn-
ing. Pam was still too out of it to attend, even though Dwight had spoken privately with Paul and the state agents and asked that she not be charged for abducting Cal. Dwight and Cal entered and sat with the family. I sat inconspicuously at the back of the church and watched as Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards, both elegant in black designer suits, spoke of their grief at losing their third musketeer. There was a huge wreath from her classmates.
Mrs. Shay wanted Cal to come back to the house afterwards, but Dwight stood firm and, to Cal’s barely concealed relief (not to mention mine), told her that we needed to get on the road.
While I went by Cal’s school to get his records and turn in his books, he and Dwight picked up some plastic sheeting at the hardware store to wrap the boxes we’d packed in case the weather turned messy again. They wedged them in the back of Dwight’s truck, alongside Cal’s bike and Bandit’s wire crate, then covered everything with a well-secured tarp. Bandit rode in the cab of the truck with Dwight and Cal. There were more boxes in the backseat of my car, and our bags were in my trunk.
I led the way as we caravanned south. I agreed to keep my cruise control set smack on the speed limit and not a single mile over. Dwight agreed to keep up. Even stopping for lunch in Greensboro, we were home by mid- afternoon.
While I helped Cal unpack and settle in, Dwight checked in at the office.
He had kept me up to date on the investigation of J.D.
