“Please,” she said. “Come inside. Would you like some coffee? I have a fresh pot on.”
“That sounds real good.” I stepped through the door, unzipping my coat. “It’s gotten chilly out. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a hard frost by morning.”
I followed Melinda Wilcox through a foyer, across a darkened, Victorian-looking parlor, and into the kitchen. The kitchen was bright and warm, with a chrome-legged table and matching chairs and worn linoleum on the floor. There was a squat white refrigerator that must have been twenty years old. On the wall above it, there was one of those plastic clocks that looks like a cat. You know the kind I mean. The pendulum is the tail, and the eyes move back and forth with each swing.
Melinda Wilcox no doubt had been small, even as a mature woman, and her stature had been further diminished with the passing of a great number of years. She was quick to inform me that she was eighty-three years old. A sprightly eighty-three, I observed. She was quick and alert, moving around her vast kitchen with rapid, tiny steps, leaning all the while on a shiny black cane.
She poured coffee into a china cup, the spout of the pot tapping lightly against the porcelain with the shaking of her blue-veined hands.
“Would you like cream and sugar, Sheriff Bigelow?”
“No, thank you.”
“I think I’ll have a cup myself,” she said. “I doubt if I’ll be able to sleep anyway, after all this excitement.” She poured a second cup and arranged herself in a chair across the table from me. “Elderly people seldom sleep well, you know. I believe I read somewhere that it has to do with the metabolism.” She smiled in a charming fashion, revealing a nicely fitted set of dentures. “Of course a man of your age wouldn’t know anything about that.”
That’s the sort of comment that will keep me happy for a solid week.
“Do you have any idea who might have tried to break into your house, Mrs. Wilcox?”
“Miss,” she corrected me. “I am an old maid.” For a moment she seemed to slip far away, as if considering how she had come to be so, then suddenly she was back. “No — I really have no idea. But so much of this sort of thing goes on these days that I’m surprised I haven’t been bothered before now.”
“You live alone here?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Do you have any family in town?”
“Now, sheriff. I’ve lived in this big old house for over sixty years, and I feel perfectly safe and at home here. The doors and the windows all have locks, and if anyone bothers me again, I’ll simply pick up my telephone like I did tonight.”
“I’ll send my deputy over tomorrow to take another look around in the daylight, though I doubt if he’ll find much. I’ll have him check your doors and windows, too, just to be on the safe side.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said.
I wasn’t quite sure how to bring up what I wanted to talk about next. It had to be talked about, though. “I — uh — I suppose you read about the problems we’ve had over at the Oak Knoll Cemetery.”
“Why, yes!” she said. “I think it’s simply terrible!”
There was an awkward silence. On the wall, the cat ticked.
“Something very similar happened last night,” I said. “This time over at Willow Creek.”
I had halfway expected some sort of a reaction. All I got was silence and a blank stare. Apparently the name had been nothing more than a coincidence.
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” she said. “It certainly can’t have anything to do with me.”
“Of course not. It’s just that one of the graves that had been disturbed belonged to a man by the name of Clyde Wilcox. I was afraid you might have known...”
I hauled up short. I’d gotten a reaction, all right.
Her voice was so low it was almost inaudible. “My father’s name was Clyde Wilcox.”
Damn, I thought. “And your mother?”
“Emma,” she said. “Her maiden name was Emma Morrison.”
“Oh.” I fiddled with the coffee cup. “I see.”
Her eyes were intent on my face.
“There’s no need to worry,” I said abruptly. “There wasn’t really that much damage, and everything’s been put right now. I’m— I’m sorry to have had to bring it up at all.”
She gave me a long, searching look which rapidly turned into one of pure puzzlement. “I know what you’re thinking, sheriff, but it’s simply not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” I said. “Clyde Wilcox. Born June 14, 1877. Died...”
“No!” She was shaking her head. “I don’t understand this at all. My father was born on June 14, 1877. But his people were all from Indiana. There’s a family cemetery there. That’s where he and my mother are buried, sheriff. Not in Missouri.”
My discomfiture at broaching a painful topic was rapidly giving way to confusion. All of a sudden, questions were buzzing around inside my head like a swarm of angry hornets.
I suppose it’s human nature to want to find easy answers for complicated questions. That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I did.
With predictable results, I might add.
By Friday afternoon, Doc McIlroy was ready with his rabbit-in-the-hat trick.
He came through my office door lost in thought, puffing absently on his pipe. After a moment, he dropped it carelessly into a pocket of the lab coat he wore over his fall tweeds.
Doc can be a real fire hazard.
He glanced around the room, pleased to find that his audience would be somewhat larger than expected. Walts was still there, having found some excuse to delay his departure for Corinth and the Wilcox place; so was Carmen Willowby, who had shown up only moments before Walts had started making excuses.
Doc took a seat, favoring Carmen with a nod and a wink. He settled back, lacing his fingers behind his head, and pretended to study the paint flaking off my office ceiling.
“Is this a social call?” I inquired.
Doc dropped his gaze toward me. “Nope. I’ve got an I.D. for you on the old man, if you’re still interested.” He paused a moment for dramatic effect. “It was his teeth that gave him away.”
“How do you mean?” Carmen asked. A notepad and pencil had appeared out of nowhere, as had a pair of reading glasses.
“His dental work had a certain look to it,” Doc said. “What you might call ‘institutional ineptness,’ for want of a better descriptive phrase.”
“I don’t follow you,” Carmen said.
“The overall quality of the workmanship was very poor,” Doc explained. “I guessed he’d had his teeth fixed in prison. An institutional practice is occasionally the refuge of the barely competent medical practitioner.”
“Something like the position of county coroner,” I commented.
“I haven’t had any complaints yet,” Doc replied dryly. He turned back toward Carmen. “The laundry marks on his clothing seemed to point toward the same conclusion, and the fact that the markings had scarcely faded suggested a fairly recent release date. I teletyped his description to the State Department of Corrections, and had a probable I.D. on him this morning. When his records came in over the wire a while ago, I was certain.”
“They sure narrowed it down quick,” Walts commented. “There must have been a lot of prisoners who fit his description turned loose over the last few months.”
“But not so many of his age,” Doc explained. “Your average convict is fairly young. This guy was almost as old as Sheriff Bigelow there.”
I’d been waiting for that. “You gonna tell us his name, or not?” I asked.
“Benjamin Simms,” Doc said. “Age sixty-nine. He was released from Kuypersville State Prison about six weeks back. He was certainly no stranger to the place. The man did time in Leavenworth, and elsewhere. He seems to have spent more time inside than out.” Doc reached into a pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a rather lengthy teletyped message. “His records.”