Quiet Dell: A Novel (29 page)

“And here it is,” Eric said. “Broad Oaks. You with us, Emily?” He slowed to read street signs.

“With you,” Emily said. She fell into a reverie, a dream to oppose darkness, though the day was very bright. This travail
would end with William, her hands in his. William would travel to her; her home would be their home. His property would be his wife’s home. His stables were there, his job. That was perfectly fine. They would have a life. She would love him. She loved him now, before he was even fully known to her.

“So,” Eric said, “Luella Powers.”

“Luella Strother—” Emily began.

“Powers,” Eric reminded her.

“If you insist,” Emily said, “but, I’m certain, not married in the usual sense. She was his front or his accessory, and benefited from his larceny. She knew more, but we don’t know how much.”

“She made few demands,” Eric quipped. “It’s the necessary attitude if one is married to Bluebeard. At any rate, go on.”

“Luella Strother Powers, forty-three, and her sister, Eva Belle Strother, forty-five, run a neighborhood grocery store at Quincy Street; it should be ten blocks or so, that way. They live off several inherited rental properties, left them by their mother, who died soon after Powers turned up.”

“Convenient,” mused Eric. “You seem well informed, cousin. Read this fairy tale, printed in the local rag the day after Powers was charged in the Eicher murders. Read it aloud, will you?”

“Date of August 29,
Clarksburg Telegram
. ‘
Powers’ wife . . . still expresses her faith in her husband and believes he is innocent. She caressed him and called him Honey when she talked with him last night.’
So,” Emily interjected, “she did visit him at the jail. Not such a shut-in. It goes on, brilliantly written—
‘She is a rather large woman with red hair. She calls her husband Harry and insists his name is Harry F. Powers. Mrs. Powers absolutely denies she knew about her husband’s alleged love racket. Even when shown love letters in her husband’s own handwriting to women all over the country she still insisted she loved him intensely and intended to stand by him until the last.’ ”

“You see? Loyal. A martyr to helpless love.”

“Today’s
Exponent
tells a different tale.” Emily took the folded paper from her notebook. “Grimm said Powers’ attorney leaked this to the press. Ready? The banner headline:
‘Believe Powers Tried
to Obtain Property Rights
.’ And the copy:
‘Found yesterday among the belongings of Harry F. Powers was a copy of a document that would have given him power of attorney to sell or otherwise dispose of the property of his wife and her sister, had it been recorded.’ ”
Emily looked over at Eric and read, with dramatic emphasis.
“ ‘The paper was not recorded, however. Why, has not been revealed—’ ”

Eric gasped. “And what are we to make of this?”

Emily read aloud, as though delivering an onstage monologue:

“It is believed that Powers had both papers drawn up, possibly without his wife’s knowledge. . . . They had been married at that time less than a year. Possibly he showed his wife the will as an inducement to get her to sign the power of attorney, and possibly she refused to sign. . . . These papers and other evidence . . . indicate that Powers may have had it in mind at various times to ‘do away’ with his wife and her sister. They are said to have told neighbors that they were going to sell out and ‘go on a long trip west.’ ”

“No need to go west,” Eric said. “They are among the brute’s victims.”

“Victims that lived with him for four years,” Emily scoffed, “providing suitable cover as he came and went, with large sums of cash purloined from some mysterious source—”

The streets grew narrower, hilly, still cleanly brick-paved. Well-kept, working-class Clarksburg, upstanding enough. Concrete steps, four or five, ascended the grassy banks to the sidewalks; more steps led to the houses themselves, simple wood-frame structures built into the upper or lower sides of the hills.

“Here,” Emily said, “Quincy Street.”

Beside her, Duty began growling. Eric pulled the car over and put a calming hand on the dog. “There now, old man. You have found it: the Powers’ Grocery.”

“Shhh, Duty. You must wait for us. Eric is quite capable.” She put the dog in his carrier, out of sight on the floor of the backseat, and cracked the windows.

It had to be the grocery. Crowds stood in front, in both side yards, and along the sloping sidewalks, talking in small groups. A house turned storefront, the building was weathered, unpainted wood. Concrete steps led to a high front stoop and black screen door. No sign identified it as a place of business, but a wooden marquee, silvered the color of barn board, rose above it. The entire structure was impressively blank, the frontage just large enough for a door and two household windows. The house broadened in back, with wings to both sides. The peaked roof indicated a second floor.

“Can it be people buy groceries in that building? Give me the small camera.” Eric lowered the window and took several shots in natural light.

“Eric, we must go in. I’ve something to say to them.”

“Emily, I ask you to humor me. Stand well back from these women. Agreed?” They got out of the roadster, Emily with her notebook and a copy of the
Tribune,
Eric with his camera.

A sunburned, sweaty boy, his chambray shirt hanging open, his
dark hair in his eyes, stood squinting at the roadster. “That your car, mister?”

Eric locked the car and addressed the boy. “It is my car, sir, and I shall pay you a quarter to watch it for me, standing just there.”

“I’ll watch it, mister,” the boy said.

Eric took Emily’s arm, and crossed the street with her. They ascended steps to the sidewalk and began walking to the entrance. Emily half expected Eric to open the door with his handkerchief, but it wasn’t necessary. Another reporter, exiting, held it open for them.

The inside was dim, for there were no windows but the two in front. The room, with its three rows of partially stocked shelves, smelled of sawdust, and the counter was to the right. A few reporters stood interviewing the sisters. The cash register, once ornate, was tarnished black. A tall thin woman, evidently Eva Belle Strother, stood behind the bare wooden counter and smoothed a newspaper that lay open before her. She was sallow, rigidly upright, her gray hair pulled back in a tight knot. Her long apron seemed an accessory.

“All I know is that we are thankful we are here,” she was saying. She looked down at the newsprint, posing for photographs while reading the story of her narrow escape.

“Miss Strother,” a reporter called out, “there’s a rumor, now that your sister has been held and questioned, that you are leaving town. Any truth to that story?”

Eva Belle shrugged and looked up. “Why should we leave?” she said, defiant. “We own this property, not Powers.”

She was colorless, ironfisted. She had not signed Powers’ document, or even considered doing so.

Luella Powers sat in a chair to her sister’s right, partially hidden behind the counter. Her hair was reddish, badly dyed; she wore rimless glasses, had a weak chin, and pursed her lips like a mole peering at daylight.

Reporters, one after the other, directed questions at her.

“Mrs. Powers, you first told the
Exponent
that you have known Harry Powers for decades, that your mother and his father were
friends years ago. In fact, you met him through a matrimonial bureau, didn’t you, and married him in 1927, in Oakland, Maryland.”

“We have nothing to say,” Eva Belle Strother remarked.

That number again, Emily thought. Had Powers hypnotized Luella? He’d affected bedraggled captivity at the jail, but his blue eyes could seem almost mesmerizing. Their focus was searing.

“You told police he had visited Chicago three different times,” a reporter said, “and then that Chicago was merely halfway to his former home in Cedar Rapids. What is the address of his former home?”

“What about his frequent trips from home, Mrs. Powers? Did you never question his long absences?”

Luella sat upright for a moment and declared, “I was never afraid to trust him. He’s just as good as any other man. One’s just as ornery as the other.”

“Ornery?” Emily stepped forward to address her, moving to Eric’s left. “He is accused of brutally murdering women and children. Do you call such behavior ‘ornery’? Mrs. Powers, have you anything to say about the crimes of which Harry Powers is accused?”

Eva Belle Strother cast her steely gaze across the room as Eric stepped in front of Emily. “All I know,” she repeated tonelessly, like a taunt, “is that we are thankful we are here.”

“Powers was fired from the Eureka Vacuum Company three years ago.” Eric glared at her. “What is his source of income? How might he repay you a loan of nearly four thousand dollars?”

“My sister has been ill for two years. She knows nothing of all this.” Eva Belle turned to Luella, directing her.

“Did you write letters, Mrs. Powers,” Emily said, “pretending to be Dorothy Lemke? Did you write what Powers told you to write, and not ask why? You will be found out. Your handwriting will prove you an accomplice.”

“You heard me! We have nothing to say!” Eva Belle shouted, bracing both hands on the newspaper before her.

“You have a newspaper there,” Emily said. “I have a newspaper
here.” She held a copy of the
Tribune
before her, open to a three-column picture of Asta Eicher and her children. She walked forward as Eric kept pace beside her. “This is Asta Eicher, widowed mother,” Emily said clearly, forcefully. “This is Grethe Eicher, fourteen years old. This is Hart Eicher, twelve years old, who fought to protect his family. This is Annabel Eicher, nine years old. They are all free of you, and the animal you sheltered here.” Emily snapped the paper shut.

They turned as one, walking out through the crowd. More neighbors and townspeople had crowded inside, or gathered on the stoop, attracted by the sound of raised voices. Emily felt Eric behind her, and then his hand on her shoulder, and at her arm.

•   •   •

“So,” Eric said in the car, “that is that.” He’d given the boy his quarter before driving now, headlong, back toward the Gore. “I think it likely you will be the story tomorrow, cousin.”

“I don’t know what came over me,” Emily said darkly.

“Avenging angel,” Eric murmured.

“And the way you kept shielding me, as though they’re witches! And what protects you, if they are really necromancers?”

“My sword and my shield,” he said. “Emily, we are going home tomorrow. I will pick you up at the Gore, and deliver you to Romine. Are you sure about riding with them to Pittsburgh?”

“Yes. Duty and I will sit in the back, alone with our thoughts, and our burdens just behind us. I will stay at the crematorium, be sure William’s directions are followed, and those Pennsylvania folk will get us to the train. Someone must stay with the Eichers. They can’t be shipped—like freight.”

“Well,” he said, “I shall miss you and Duty, driving back.”

“Even Duty?”

“Oh yes. In my opinion, he has earned his passage.”

“Tonight I shall file a last story from the Gore, concerning Dorothy Lemke. Clarksburg could be a pretty town, in these lovely mountains, if one stumbled into it from a different dream.”

•   •   •

Emily, her packed bags beside her, scanned her copy. She’d written the headline and subhead—
LEMKE REMEMBERS HER OWN LOST CHILD; Divorcee’s Excursion to Bucolic West Virginia Ends in Tragedy, Reporter Writes from Hotel Room Where Lemke Spent Last Hours—
and ended with the will, a simple document dated July 22, 1927. Dorothy was alive in the words.

To Whom It May Concern: I, Dorothy Pressler Lemke, make my will and testament. Whatever money there is left after I am cremated, and my ashes strewn in the wind, I don’t want them kept or buried by anybody. Whatever money is left, I leave five hundred $500.00 dollars to my sister in Northboro, River Street, Mrs. Gretchen Pressler Fleming. And if I should need someone to take care of me before I die I leave that party two hundred $200.00 dollars, besides their wages, will have to be taken from the bulk of my money. And the rest I leave in memorie for my little boy, who died in 1923, to the children’s crippled hospital to make some little boy or little girl well and strong. I do not want that anybody should do otherwise, as any luck they shall not have out of it, if anybody tries to do otherwise as I have here dictated, I like to see my wishes fulfilled and everybody concerned about it, will be happier for it, these is my last will.

Banker’s Charity Provides Funeral for Mother, Tots . . . With the estate of Mrs. Asta Buick Eicher wiped out entirely by mortgages on her Park Ridge home . . . William H. Malone, Park Ridge banker, today agreed to pay all funeral expenses for the family of four, murdered by Harry F. Powers. . . . It was funds furnished by Mr. Malone that helped greatly in solving the mystery of the disappearance of the Eicher family . . . and today he drew an additional check for $1,500 . . . to pay the funeral expenses.