“Do you know about the bones found on the farm this week?”
“Yup, read about it in the paper. They say they belonged to a black woman. Been there a long time, they said.”
“Charles Brandt,” Louis said. “Was Phoebe his mother?”
“Well, there was always talk about the Brandts. Way back, I mean,” the old man said. “That there was… well…”
“A black woman in the family,” Louis said evenly.
The man nodded.
Louis went to Charles’s headstone. The big yellow dog trotted over and sat by Louis’s feet.
“Is Charles’s mother buried here?” Louis asked.
“Don’t know. Hard to tell with these old stones being as messed up as they are,” the man said. “Nobody to care for this place anymore. Things went to hell after Jonah died. The daughter, Geneva, ran off, and the son, Owen, got in trouble with the law, I heard.”
Louis was thinking about the bones of the black woman buried in the Brandt barn. It struck him odd that Amos’s “beloved” black son, Charles, was buried here but that Charles’s mother was not.
His eyes traveled over the other ruined and half-buried headstones. Maybe her headstone had simply been lost. Or was she the woman whose bones had been found in the barn?
“Folks are saying she was probably a slave,” the old man said.
Louis looked over at him.
“That woman they found in the barn, I mean,” the man said.
“Michigan was a free state,” Louis said.
The man tugged at his beard. “Maybe she was runaway and the slave catchers found her at a station here.”
“Station?” Louis said. “You mean the Underground Railroad?”
The man nodded. “Two of the lines ran right through these parts, they say.”
Louis looked past the old man, southward through the bare trees, to the faded red of the Brandt barn. He was seeing the bones in the dirt, but he was hearing Amy’s descriptions of men on horses with torches.
He shook his head slowly.
“What’s the matter, son?” the old man asked.
“Nothing,” Louis said.
The old man tugged the John Deere cap down on his head. “This is a haunted place,” he said. “You can feel it, you can.” He scratched the dog’s head. “Let’s go home, Henry.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Joe was perched on the edge of the bed, the old tin of photographs, the Bible, the piano roll, and the scrap of pink wallpaper spread out on the blanket.
“You haven’t said what you think about all this,” Louis said.
“It certainly explains some things,” Joe said.
“I think Dr. Sher is right,” Louis said.
“About what?”
“Imagination, real memories, that Amy is just mixing all this up in her head,” Louis said.
Joe gave him a warning with her eyes to lower his voice. He looked to the open door and went to it. Amy was sitting on the floor of the living room watching Phil Donahue. Joe had been slowly introducing the girl to television, and she was mesmerized by everything. She was sitting only a foot from the screen, and for a second, Louis thought about telling her to move back, but then he remembered how it annoyed him when his foster mother, Frances, bugged him about the same thing. He closed the door and turned back to Joe.
She was going through the photographs from the tin. She held one out. “Did you see this?”
Louis came forward and took it. It was a sepia-toned photograph of a white man and woman. And a second woman, dark-skinned, holding a baby.
He turned it over. No names or date. But the clothing looked as if it could be of the Civil War era. The man was bearded, with wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a suit. The woman was thin-faced, with severe dark hair, wearing a light printed gown and a dark shawl bound with a cameo brooch. The black woman was much younger, her ebony skin a sharp contrast to the white of her blouse, which seemed too large for her slender frame. Her hair was bound in a scarf. The face of the baby in her arms was as white as its long christening dress.
“Amos and Phoebe?” Joe asked.
“That’s my guess,” Louis said. He took his glasses from his pocket and slipped them on.
“Then who’s the other woman?” Joe asked.
“Charles Brandt’s mother?” Louis said.
“And maybe the woman we found in the barn?”
“There’s no way to prove it.”
Joe sat back against the headboard. “But you want to.”
Louis took off his glasses, bringing Joe back into focus. He had known her for more than a year but had told her little about his past. Yet she seemed to know him so well at times. He came over to sit next to her on the bed.
“When I was on the force here in Ann Arbor, I had to take a leave to go to Mississippi,” he said. “I didn’t want to go. I hadn’t been there since I was seven, but my mother was dying, so I went.”
“I didn’t know you were from Mississippi,” Joe said.
“I was born there but went into foster care here in Michigan with the Lawrences when I was seven,” Louis said. “While I was down there, I got involved in this old case. Some bones were found in the woods. They turned out to be a lynching victim. No one wanted to know who this man was. No one wanted to speak for him. So I had to.”
“Did you ever find out who it was?” Joe asked.
Louis nodded. “His name was Eugene Graham.”
Joe drew in a long breath. “Louis, we have other things to consider here. We can’t get distracted by this.”
“I know that, Joe.”
“We have Jean’s murder to think about,” Joe said. “And we have another hearing coming up in less than a week, and if we don’t find something, Owen Brandt will step in front of that judge and ask for his daughter back.”
“I know that, too. Maybe the judge will give us more time.”
Joe shook her head. “But I don’t have more time. I have to get back to work.”
Louis rose and walked away, waiting a moment before he turned back to face her. He held up the old photograph. “Things like this are important to me, Joe.”
“Well, what happens to that girl out there is important to me, Louis,” Joe said.
Louis was quiet. A sudden crazy thought had come to him: Phillip and Frances taking in Amy. But the Lawrences hadn’t taken in a foster kid in more than a decade.
A squeak drew their eyes to the door. Amy poked her face in through the crack. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said.
“It’s okay, Amy. What is it?” Joe asked.
“Mr. Shockey is here.” She lowered her voice. “And I think he’s been drinking beer.”
Louis went out into the living room. Jake Shockey was standing just inside the door. His face was flushed, and his jacket looked as if he had slept in it. But it was his expression that made Louis go to him.
“Jake, what’s the matter?”
Shockey managed a hard smile. “Hey, peeper. Just wanted to drop in and see how things are going.” His red-rimmed eyes drifted past Louis and found Amy standing with Joe at the bedroom door. “How’s the kid?”
Louis glanced back at Joe, then took Shockey’s arm. “Come on, I think you need some coffee.”
