Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Urban.”
“Sheila.”
After my post-dog park shower, and with my airport duty canceled and reunion with Teague delayed, I’d decided I might as well do my part, which meant following up with Urban.
Also to avoid Clara being disappointed in me when she came over later.
The concise greetings upon my arrival at the historical society indicated our position on the friendship ladder had not improved.
“I wanted to check if William Alsup is related to Felix Alsup, who was hanged in 1936.”
“He is. A good many other people are, too, here and elsewhere, since Felix was one of twelve siblings.”
“I have another question, though it’s not exactly historical. At least not as far back as we usually discuss. Before you retired, did you have any business dealings with Damon Swindell?”
Urban had been active in business, with his connections reaching across Northern Kentucky and well into Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington.
“No. He was not part of the business community at that time.”
That struck me as careful wording, meant to answer the letter of the question while avoiding the spirit.
Doing quick mental math on possible ages, I asked, “Did you have dealings with his father?”
“Absolutely not.”
I blinked at his vehemence.
He didn’t seem to notice as he added, “Some people you cross paths with, through a combination of geography and their ability to insert themselves into the higher levels of professional business intercourse. You are not, however, forced to deal with them. Weak-willed individuals might say they are thus forced when, in fact, they are merely putting the venal and short-term considerations of expediency ahead of all else, including principle, honor, or integrity.”
Whew.
Not a careful answer this time. It was safe to say Urban didn’t think much of the senior Swindell.
He capped it off with, “You do your best to limit acknowledging their existence while maintaining your expectations for your own behavior.”
“You extended that to not having dealings with the son?”
“Damon was a late child and so the occasion did not arise in my business dealings.”
“But if the occasion had arisen?”
“I would have avoided him as assiduously as I had the father, based on what I knew from trusted sources.”
“What was Damon’s relationship with his father?” Another flicker of distaste showed before I could add, “Or his mother, for that matter.”
“His mother, I have been told, was a lovely young woman, an immigrant, who was employed in the household of a neighbor as a nanny. His father had two older children whose mother had died. The father married the neighbor’s nanny.
Some said to acquire childcare for his children without paying a salary.
A year after she gave birth to Damon, she was gone, without Damon.
The story the family put about was that she returned to her native country to care for an invalid mother. ”
Urban didn’t believe that.
Whatever the truth, Damon had no mother and a less than warm and cozy father.
“How was his relationship with his siblings?”
Deadpan, Urban said, “The last I encountered either of them, they would immediately correct you by emphasizing half-siblings. Each achieved an education, then moved far away, building lives elsewhere. Only Damon remained in his father’s orbit.
From the little I chose to hear, he strove mightily to earn his father’s approval and never succeeded, despite following in those paternal footsteps. ”
I might have felt sorry for the young Damon, but having encountered the adult Damon, I didn’t. Lots of people were dealt a rough hand and became good adults. There is a level of personal responsibility in how we work the clay we’re handed.
Urban wasn’t done.
“It is something, perhaps, to be grateful for that the cycle ends with Damon, since he had no offspring.”
That felt like an end to what he would say about Damon. I tried an approach more likely to appeal to him.
“Was there more about that history of the public hanging you didn’t tell me the other day?”
“There is a great deal I didn’t share. I provided you the merest sketch of the events in Owensboro. Do you have a particular area of interest?”
“Actually, I meant the case here, in North Bend County. The one involving Judge Swindell and the Alsup family.”
His eyes sharpened slightly, but he said merely, “The same answer applies.”
We were at a juncture.
If I let him loose and told him I wanted to know everything, the telling might never end.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to ask too narrow a question and miss a potentially telling detail.
“Within your vast knowledge of the situation, are there elements that might pertain to the murder of Damon Swindell? Or could be useful for Clara and me to know as we look into that case?”
He nodded in apparent judicious appreciation of my questions.
Then he said, “No.”
“No? But Alsup’s family was wronged by Damon Swindell’s family. You said so.”
“Nearly a hundred years ago. I must say, if every member of a family that did a member of another North Bend County family wrong in the past century or two was knocked off for that reason, there wouldn’t be any old families left. And the more recent arrivals would be dwindling fast.”
“But you said—” I cut off my words, remembering Clara saying, They’d have to be awfully patient to wait until now to act on that grudge.
“Okay, that might not have been the inciting incident or an entire motive, but it could have contributed.”
He damned my stance with the faintest of praise. “I can’t definitively say it could not have contributed.”
I pushed a bit more. “In fact, it makes sense that it did contribute, because Pammy Swindell got bent out of shape when a comment was made about her husband’s family.”
“Ah. The question is if those two things go together — the murder of Damon Swindell and his widow getting heated about the family.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, irked enough to say the truth.
“Urban, we were friends — I thought we were friends. Then you kept important things from me and damaged my trust. I haven’t known if we could get back to where we were. But I know we absolutely can’t if you’re going to mess around with me like this.”
He looked back at me for several beats, then streamed out a breath.
“At last, you’re talking about it. That’s a start.”
“I don’t know—”
He cut me off. Just as well. Wasn’t sure which thing I didn’t know would have been the first out of my mouth.
“I can’t tell you anything about the murder of Damon Swindell, but I can tell you background to possibly explain why Pammy became heated.”
I held my tongue through a brief pause.
“At the time Damon’s ancestor, the judge, presided over the trial I told you about, sending Alsup’s ancestor to the gallows while — to all appearances — being bribed to let off the other man found guilty of the crime, the family name was not Swindell.”
My forehead muscles squeezed. Not Swindell . . .?
“The family name then was spelled S-w-i-n-d-l-e.”
It took a second for that to sink in. “Swindle. Swindle? As in . . . swindle?”
“Yes.”
“As in cheat or defraud.” I was no longer asking. I was having a hard time not laughing.
“Yes.”
“As in a swindler, a—”
“Cheater, defrauder. Yes.”
My laughter jostled my words. “And they changed it to Swindell, with the accent on the last syllable.”
“Yes. Are you quite all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine . . . Oh, goodness. My ribs hurt. No wonder . . .” The name switch explained the power Zoley had exerted with the mention of needing to spell Swindell after Pammy poked at her about . . . like Zoey with an ‘L’.
“From old journals and diaries of the time, there was a good deal of laughter at the judge’s expense when he declared the name change.”
“It was the judge who made the change?”
He nodded. “Immediately after that trial and the hanging of William Alsup’s ancestor.”
Not inclined to laugh now, I said, “I can understand why the Alsup family didn’t care for the Swindles-slash-Swindells.”
The question remained whether that historic familial injustice contributed to the recent murder.
* * * *
Clara was as amused by the original name as I was when I filled her in as soon as she arrived at my house.
“Do we feel sorry for Damon?” Clara asked after I’d shared all Urban said while we enjoyed tea, cheese, and oranges.
“For the name?” I took a bite from a slice of Monterey Jack.
“For the parent situation.”
“Don’t think we need to go that far, do you?”
“No. He was crooked. His trying to cheat William Alsup and his family makes him a strong suspect.”
“Oscar, too. And Willow.”
She frowned at my additions, but said, “We also know Damon wasn’t good to his dog.”
“Um, I don’t think Lucifer’s a suspect, do you?”
“Of course not.” She sounded incensed that the dog could be suspected by anyone of anything. Then her tone switched. “You’re going to tell Teague about this, aren’t you?”
“Clara—”
“Oh, I get it. The sheriff’s department has a lot more resources than we do and there could be a whole lot more people than William—” Nope, she didn’t include Oscar or Willow. “—that Damon cheated in business and who might want him dead. It makes sense. I’m not arguing.”
“But?”
She sighed. “It’s frustrating. We find out something that leads to more somethings and then we have to turn it over to Teague and the sheriff’s department. Okay, okay,” she said as if I’d argued. “I know the goal is to figure out who the murderer is and it’s not a contest.”
“True.”
“So, what do we look into next?”
If I’d had a response, it would have been lost in the rush of the dogs passing us en route to the back door, which opened from the garage.
Teague.
I was smiling as we bridged over Murphy and Gracie to kiss.
He kept a hand on my arm as he dropped his bag to rub first Murphy’s ears, then Gracie’s.
“Welcome home. I’ll just—”
As he straightened and looked past me, he said, “No, no, don’t go, Clara. I’m only here for a short time.” He sent me a look that combined an apology and a kind of fatalistic shrug at the detective’s lot. “And I hoped to hear from both of you.”
Ding, ding, ding.
I looked over my shoulder. Yup, Clara agreed.
Teague had assessed what the sheriff’s department had put together by way of a case and wasn’t satisfied.
“You’re witnesses — not to the event, but the day before — and you’re both observant,” he said.
We were also witnesses to a few things after the murder, but bringing that up didn’t need to be decided now.