Saltwater in the Bluegrass (36 page)

It was a warrant to search the premises, the grounds, the house, the barns, the stables, and most importantly to dig up the garden area behind the house, near the driveway where Elizabeth had remembered the pool and bathhouse once being.

Four police cars carrying eight officers made their way onto the Ingram estate. Driving in, behind the patrol cars, was Lamar Jr. and Grandma Lizzy. Behind them was a Cummins tractor with a flatbed trailer carrying a Caterpillar backhoe creeping up the steep driveway, leaving two double-tandem dump trucks bringing up the rear. Katherine Ingram was now tangled between the thoughts of her own existence and the survival of her own continuation. She couldn’t escape. She stood there in silence at the front door of the Ingram Mansion, wrapped in her housecoat and pajamas, her hair in disarray and no makeup, having been awakened only minutes earlier by the house servants.

Warrants were handed over to Katherine by Detective Langley while patrol cars and machinery were still coming up the driveway and getting into place. In Katherine’s eyes, she still saw herself as strong, powerful, and direct, with determination and an overwhelming will to see past the interruption in her daily schedule. There must be a mistake. There must be, and someone would pay. She was sure of it. What could these common people, these lowly police officers and this detective, think they were going to possibly find here?

There was nothing to find. Nothing.

Katherine stood there like a statue. She felt wealth, power, and enough community influence would weather any action taken against her. She was in charge. She was going to get to the bottom of this. She was going to sue every one of these people that stood in front of her. Then she was going to take their jobs, take their livelihoods, and destroy each and every one of them. Every lawyer she knew was going to get a call, and these lowlifes had better leave now. Katherine continued to yell, continued to banter on and on as though something she said was going to make these people turn around and run for cover.

This is how it worked. This is how she saw the outcome. She had lawyers. She knew her rights. She was in charge. She kept saying over and over in a loud, boorish voice that she was in charge. And then the shouting stopped.

“Shut up, Katherine!”
yelled a voice from the driveway. It wasn’t a loud voice, but within an instant, Katherine was paralyzed where she stood. She watched as Elizabeth Ingram was helped out of the passenger side of a car.

“Shut up, Katherine,” continued Elizabeth. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word.”

Katherine had not noticed the car that had followed the police up the drive, or that Lamar Jr. and her mother was sitting there with the officers. She had only seen Detective Langley and the paperwork he had handed to her, the paperwork that was now firmly rolled up in her hand. She had not until that moment seen or recognized anybody else, seen anyone else, only an outline of people, no faces, and no one she could recall, much less the mother that she had cast out from the family so many years back. Her demeanor instantly changed. Her face had gone from flush to a sudden withdrawn look of surprise. Elizabeth shut the door and stepped from the sedan. She made her way up the sidewalk towards Katherine, using a cane and Lamar Junior’s arm for support.

Everyone stood and watched.

Elizabeth walked up the sidewalk, past the police officers, past Detective Langley, and made her way to the front door where Katherine was standing.

“It’s over. It stops now. It ends here and now; all of it. No more. Do you understand me, Katherine? No more.”

Someone was going to find the truth.

Time was suddenly crucial to Katherine. She had to leave, but where? Where could she go? How would she go? No one was going to let her leave.

Her past was finally catching up with her. Her web of control was now going out of control. She began to panic. There was no way to stop them. There was no way to stop the police. There was no way to stop the digging. They were going to find out all of the Ingram secrets, all the years of Katherine’s secrets.

But would they? Maybe they would miss it. Maybe they would search and fine nothing. Maybe it would all go away. Katherine had to stay cool. She continued carrying on a conversation with herself, as though there were two of her, back and forth, back and forth she went.

She moved quickly in all directions. She paused, as she walked by the windows, then she started to walk again. Her anxiety began to reach new levels, levels that even she had not seen before. Again and again she looked through the window as the men outside started the search.

First they checked the house, then the barns and stables, and then the garage. Looking and watching, watching and looking, as they continued to search. She was watching their every move, pacing back and forth like a caged cat. When would they leave? When would they go away and leave her alone?

It was not going to happen. Not this time. Katherine was caught and it was just a matter of time now before everyone would find out all the details and secrets that had been here for all these years, all these many years.

The primary search was over. Now it was time to begin the dig. It was time to search the yard, time to search the garden. Time to search and find out why the pool had been covered up for all these years. It was time to unearth the past.

The backhoe dug one scoop, then two scoops, and then it stopped. Once again it started up, one scoop, two scoops, and then it stopped. Again and again, load after load of dirt was removed from where the garden had been.

The digging stopped. The outline of the pool was now visible. Four corners, the walls of concrete, all that had been covered by flowers and vegetables for years, were now showing the outline of what had once been the pool.

Three feet of topsoil was gone, and the officers could feel the bottom, even if it was still five or ten feet away. Over and over the bucket would dig, deeper and deeper, until at last they pulled the last of the dirt out and revealed what had been left on the bottom of the pool for all these years.

At the base of the pool, lying in a decaying blanket, lay the remains of a skeleton. Not just any skeleton, but one of a teenage girl. Within minutes of the find, Elizabeth looked down into the bottom of the pool and saw what had still been missed by the police and everyone watching.

“Oh my,” Elizabeth said, and she started to cry.

The remains were missing the right pinky finger bone. Elizabeth fell to her knees crying. She knew what it meant. As the skeleton was being removed from the makeshift grave, an object fell from inside the material that was left of the blanket that had covered it. Beside the skeleton was a trophy, a dirty, little, two-dollar plastic trophy that had been worn down by the dirt and moisture from all the years that it had laid there.

Detective Langley bent down and picked it up, turning it over while wiping away the dirt as he stood up. He read aloud the inscription on the trophy’s base: “1st Place in Swimming, Plantation Country Club. Congratulations, Katherine Ingram.”

Elizabeth knew, as soon as she saw the missing little pinky finger, that in the bottom of the pool lay her daughter Katherine. It was her little, freckle-faced, teenage daughter who had disappeared so many years back.

It was Emily that had forced her to leave and remain missing all these years. It was Emily who sat in the chair in the front room of the house, her mind now dancing with the dust that floated in the air in front of the window. The sun was shining in on her, and the focus of light brightened each spec of dust as it fell to the floor. The story was out now.

The years were now unleashed, and the life and disorder of Emily Ingram could now be realized. There were to be no more chapters in the betrayal that Emily had caused to the family and to herself. It was over now. It was over, and it was time for the surviving Ingram family members to carry on with their existence, their life, and their future. Emily was handcuffed, read her rights, placed in the patrol car, and driven away.

The Kentuckianna Tribune,
Sunday morning edition, broke the story. It reported the facts for the whole world to read concerning the secrets, lies, and life that had been kept by Emily Ingram for all these years.

The front page of the newspaper read:

COST ME PLENTY WINS DERBY

Below, in the middle of the page, it read:

“TRAGEDY” – STORY OF THE INGRAMS

Other newspapers throughout the region also ran the story. Pictures and stories of the family’s sorrow, deceit, murder, and greed for power would be seen on the front page. Over the next few days, all of the local television stations camped outside the property along the gate of River Road.

It did not take long for the Louisville medical examiner and the Louisville Homicide Departments forensic specialists to collaborate and prove that, yes, it was Katherine Ingram’s skeleton that had been found in the pool.

Yes, there had been a body buried deep in the pool, far below the surface of the garden, but the garden had not covered up all that was buried. All these years it had been Emily Ingram, Katherine’s twin sister, who had lived the evil life, the secret life, and the hated life. It had consumed her and caused her to despise those around her: everyone that had ever gotten in her way, everyone that had simply tried to get close to her, everyone in her family who continued to give her second and third chances.

They never understood why she could be the way she was. It was Emily, who had for years, continued living in the house, running the company, pushing her way to the top. Always competing, trying to be the best.

All those times someone would bring up questions about Emily, how she had died from the heroin drug overdose or had she been sick and put away in a mental hospital. No one seemed to know. The subject was always immediately stopped. It had been a lie that only Emily knew. This is why she always hated to see her reflection in a window, why she would not look into mirrors.

Emily had killed Katherine and taken her place, assuming her identity.

I had trouble picturing the thought of her going to the extreme measure of having part of your finger removed by a doctor, just so she could match her twin sister. Was it diabolical, or just simply disturbing?

In Emily’s eyes, it was not that big a deal. Emily had gone away, supposedly on summer vacation for a month with friends, killed her sister, gone under the knife, and when she came back home, she became Katherine.

Emily had never gotten over the fact that her father had been killed. She could not deal with the pain. She had loved him so deeply. She thought what he had been doing to her was normal. In some twisted sort of way, Emily blamed her sister Katherine for screaming out loud for their father to stop. Had Katherine not been yelling so loudly or crying so hard, Beth Ann would not have heard the sounds of what was going on in the bathhouse that night and killed their father. Emily could not help but think that her own desires were more important than those of Katherine. She had warmed for the attention of her father and lost her innocence to him. Somehow she thought it was normal, even though everyone would know it was horribly wrong and immoral. Then there was the fact that in her eyes, Katherine had also taken their mother’s love away from her when she won the trophies in swimming, just like their mother had as a little girl. Then there was the fact that Emily could not swim as fast and was not as athletic as her sister.

On the day when Elizabeth Ingram had apparently died in the drowning at sea, Emily’s world collapsed around her. She was unable to rationalize what had happened in her life. As her thoughts became more controlling, she soon realized there was little, if any control left to obtain.

Emily Ingram was handcuffed and taken away.
She was now under arrest for the murder of her sister, Katherine, her brother, Lamar, and her business associate, Joseph Willy Bowen. The real Emily Ingram was found, by a psychological review board, to be completely competent to stand trial for the murder of all three people. She was no longer able to fool those around her. She was no longer able to use influence or money to get out of these circumstances.

The true side, the real side, the only side, the mathematical equation of one Emily Ingram was now known by everyone, anyone who had ever known her, hated her, cared for her, loved her, or dealt with her.

Emily was now in a holding cell, locked away from society and away from her family. She was locked away from everyone except her lawyers, except her father, Baxter, and her sister, Katherine, who visited her when the lights were off, when no one was around. She was entombed inside a concrete grave. It was just like the one she had placed her sister in years back. The only difference was she was still alive, at least for the time being. She was encased inside four walls of concrete with a bunk, a toilet, and a mirror, a mirror that continued to talk back to her every time she saw her reflection. Emily was also charged with involvement in the death of Uncle Buddy. She would spend the remaining years of her life in a cell on death row in the same facility where her older sister Beth Ann had stayed at the Ladies’ Correctional Facility in Pee Wee Valley. In time, she would become the first woman in twenty-two years to be sentenced to death by the electric chair in the state of Kentucky.
During the removal
of furniture
, boxes of clothing, linens, and office equipment from the top suite of the Ingram Towers, where Emily, masqueraded as Katherine, had lived all these years, it would eventually come out what Lamar must have found in the office in Brazil right before he had been killed.

Charlie, Kristina, and Lamar Jr. were upstairs going through the penthouse suite where the so-called Katherine had spent much of her time and found a file that consisted of correspondences from Sevil Ylime.

Again, there was no apparent reason to expect anything, at least not yet, not until one of the air bills that had been kept from a package that had been delivered to Katherine was placed on top of the stack of miscellaneous items that were going to soon be carried out of the suite by Charlie.