Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Summer
I dropped Dixie off in front of the office, then headed west to an older neighborhood where Luke’s father lived. His small ranch house was in desperate need of updates, but Chip Montgomery considered fixing up his house a frivolous waste of money. When I once mentioned that new windows would increase the resale value as well as help with his heating and cooling bills, he told me he was never selling and he never used the a/c…which was true, and one of several reasons I hadn’t visited him at his house over the summer. A house without air conditioning in southern Alabama was a hotbox. Thankfully it was cooler now, but I would have come to see him anyway. Chip was a hoarder, and I was hoping it would work to my advantage.
I wasn’t sure if he’d be home, so I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw his car in the driveway. He used to work for a lumber mill outside of town that had closed a few years ago, succumbing to the competition from Dunbar Lumber on the north side of town. He’d just turned fifty and hadn’t been able to find another job, so he’d started repairing lawn mowers in his home garage. Between the small insurance payout he’d gotten after the death of Luke’s mother, his limited income, and his frugalness, he seemed to get by just fine.
I parked in front of the house and walked up to the open single-bay garage. He was sitting in an old, metal office chair, leaning over to work on a push mower so rusted it looked like it needed to be scrapped.
“Well hello, Summer,” he said good-naturedly as I entered the garage. “What brings you by?”
“Oh, a few things, but first, how are you? I haven’t seen you in a few weeks, and Luke said you’d had a cold.”
“Oh,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Allergies.”
“With a fever?” I asked skeptically.
“Luke and his brother are worrywarts. Especially Levi since he got that medical degree.”
“You let them worry,” I said with a grin. “They want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
His eyes took on an ornery look. “You could bring me a home-cooked meal every now and again.”
I laughed. “You presume that I cook. I’ve told you before that Luke’s the one who does a lot of the cooking when we eat together. I just assist.”
“When you gonna marry my son and make an honest man out of him?”
I laughed again. “I’m not sure that’s the way it works.”
“At least you two aren’t livin’ in sin.”
Knowing him as I did, I was pretty sure he was serious. He had some antiquated ideas and marriage for cohabitation was one of them.
“You think we’re as pure as the driven snow because we aren’t sleeping in the same bed every night?” I teased.
He closed his eyes and cringed. “Cathy’s rollin’ in her grave listenin’ to you talk.”
“Cathy’s too busy playing the church organ with the heavenly choir to hear anything I say, so don’t you spend another moment worryin’ about that .”
He tried to look stern, but the corners of his lips twitched and his eyes twinkled.
“Well, now that I know you’re not sick, and we’ve determined that my soul and Luke’s are safe, I have a question to ask.”
“Shoot,” he said, giving his attention to the lawn mower again.
“I know you’ve gone to the Methodist church since you were a baby.”
“My mother took me there when I was four days old,” he said with a note of pride.
“Well, there you go,” I said, leaning my shoulder into a wooden shelf attached to the wall. “Do you remember anything about the Brewer family? The parents were Jim Bob and Celia Brewer, and they had two daughters—Lila and I’m not sure about her younger sister’s name. The sisters would have been a bit older than you, I think. I think they were members of the church.”
He pursed his lips, a faraway look clouding his eyes. “They sound vaguely familiar, but I can’t remember anything specific.” He eyed me warily. “Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, acting nonchalant. “I heard that the younger sister died, but I don’t know how. Lila left town around the same time, or so I hear through the grapevine. I thought maybe you might remember.”
He shook his head, a thoughtful expression covering his face. “Nope. The memory’s not what it used to be.”
“Ha!” I said. “You act like you’re eighty-three instead of fifty-three. But I was hoping I could count on more than just your memories. Is there any way you kept any old church directories?”
He grimaced. “Cathy hated me keepin’ those things. Called me a pack rat and insisted I throw them out.”
“That’s okay. I figured it was a long shot,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.
“Who said I actually threw them out?” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
“ You have them? ”
“Back to when I was a kid. My dad saved them too. Said you never knew when you might need someone’s address.”
I was thrilled. The older ones would likely do more good than when Luke and his brother were kids.
“I’ll dig them out tonight and you can pick them up tomorrow,” he said.
I crinkled my nose. “I was kind of hoping I could see them now.”
His eyes narrowed as he lifted his gaze to mine. “What’s the hurry?”
“I’m kind of working on something,” I said with a shrug.
“A detective case?” he asked in surprise, then frowned. “I know Luke doesn’t make much, so you’ll have to work until the babies are born, but you could at least find something more befittin’ a lady.”
I snorted. “Well, this job just might be the nest egg that provides the down payment on a house big enough for those possible future babies, so don’t you go begrudging it. Otherwise, we might hold off on having babies until we have room for them.”
He looked torn. He was eager for us to have grandchildren, especially since Luke’s brother wasn’t even dating anyone.
I gave him a bright smile, and he laughed.
“You fight dirty, Summer Baumgardner.”
It felt good having someone call me by the name I’d been born with and not one my mother had fabricated for my career.
“And don’t you forget it,” I said. “If you just tell me where those directories are, I can go pull them myself.”
Shaking his head, he got to his feet. “I’ve got so much stuff, you’ll never find it.” He picked up a rag and wiped some of the grease off his hand. “I used to keep it all in the attic, but I’ve moved it out to the shed.”
We walked around the house to the backyard, toward the rectangular wooden shed. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the padlock, then swung the door open, revealing shelves on both sides covered in filing boxes.
My mouth dropped open. “What is all this stuff?”
He shrugged as he walked inside and turned on a battery-operated light. “Odds and ends I’ve collected over the years.”
I followed him inside, reading the sides of the boxes.
Sweet Briar Newspapers from 1983 to 1999 (big headlines)
Sweet Briar City Council Minutes 2000-2012
Sweet Briar Photos 1995 to 2005
Sweet Briar Photos 2006 to 2016
I turned to him in surprise. “Chip, you’re a historian.”
His face scrunched up as he reached for a box. “What? Nah. Never been to college.”
“You don’t have to be a college graduate to be a historian. You just have to love history.”
He laughed. “I don’t love history. I just love my town.”
I could argue with him but didn’t see the point. Chip had been a blue-collar man his entire life and tended to look down on men who wore suits for a living. It was obvious he equated historians with the latter.
“This should have what you’re lookin’ for,” he said, walking toward me with the box. “You want to look at it here at the house?”
It was more of a suggestion than a question. Chip obviously considered his collection treasures and didn’t want to risk losing them.
“Yeah.” I gestured to the furniture on his back patio. “I can sit out here and look through them.” Then when he frowned, I added, “Not to worry, I’ll make sure nothing gets dirty. It’s just that it’s so nice outside today.”
He nodded. “That it is.”
He insisted on carrying the box to the patio set, and I told myself it was because he was being chivalrous and not because he was worried I’d drop it and its precious contents.
Giving the box one last look, he took a step backward. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Me too.” I took off the lid and carefully set it on the metal coffee table.
He seemed appeased and headed back to the garage while I looked inside the box. It was sectioned off into four quadrants with cardboard that Chip had rigged up himself. Each section was divided by time period and filled with stacks of directories of varying heights, but the top of each stack contained a directory from four different churches, each one’s date one or two years before. Which meant Chip collected directories from other chuches too.
Down the road, I needed to remember Chip had this, for help with future investigation cases.
I started pulling out the Methodist church directories. It looked like the past decade or so’s directories were updated every two years, but prior to the early 2000s, there were new ones made every year. I went back to the oldest directory in the stack, relieved to see it was fifty-one years old, likely old enough to include the Brewers…if they had indeed been members.
Sure enough, the family appeared only a few pages in, a solemn-looking couple with two girls, one preteen and the other a young teenager, just as solemn. Their faces were in sharp contrast to the other smiling families, including the photo of Chip’s family from when he was himself a boy, his parents, Chip and his two brothers. I turned another page and found Luke’s mother, a happy three-year-old surrounded by her happy parents and her older brother and sister. But I quickly turned back to the Brewers, reading the names underneath. Jim Bob and Celia, Lila and Bethany Brewer.
Bethany.
Well, at least we had her name.
I snapped a photo of the page, then pulled out the next directory, looking for the family. They were there, looking just as unhappy, but the two sisters were holding hands.
Had the photographer instructed them to do that or had they done it on their own? It seemed odd for teenage sisters to hold hands, but maybe they’d been close. I scanned the directory, confirming that no other children were holding hands.
Interesting.
Their serious photos continued for several more years, although the girls weren’t holding hands anymore. In the last photo that showed the entire family, Lila looked like she was a high school senior and Bethany a sophomore. Lila had a defiant look in her eyes, while Bethany looked defeated.
The next year’s photo featured just Jim Bob and Celia, who had a vacant look in her eyes. In the following year’s directory, there was no photo or a listing for any of the Brewers.
I took snapshots of every year’s photo and started to put the directories back in the box. Then on a whim, I grabbed one and started to flip through it, discovering there was a listing for members who had passed away the previous year. Grabbing the booklets I’d just returned, I opened the one where the family had been absent. In the back, under the headline Deceased , Jim Bob and Celia’s names were listed.
After writing down the year and their names in my notebook, I grabbed the directory containing the photo of just Lila’s parents. In the back, Bethany’s name was listed as deceased. I made a note of it, put everything back into the box, then carried the file to the shed. I considered putting it back on the shelf, but Chip seemed to be anal enough that I suspected he would want to make sure everything was in order and put it back himself, so I set it on the floor.
Then after a quick goodbye, I got in my car and headed back to downtown. I still had time to make a quick stop at the courthouse. I wanted to find out the cause of their deaths, and I knew the best way to get it. I was going to dig up their death certificates.