Died in the Wool (10 page)

Wisteria is the largest town in Granite County, which isn't saying much. The population has grown considerably over the past few years, and it's now around twenty thousand people. Main Street through town should be renamed Fast Food Alley, as every fast-food chain in the Midwest seems to be represented here.

There's no point in going all the way up to the St. Louis County library when the Wisteria library holds the Granite County newspapers. The librarians know me here. In fact, I'd say every librarian within a sixty-mile radius knows who I am. Today's librarian, a small blonde named Hilary, waved at me as I came in and nodded when I signed in to use the microfilm reader.

Once I was set up on a microfilm reader, I flipped through the pages until I came to the article about Glory. I had looked her up first, because I knew the exact date of her death, whereas I only knew the year that Rupert had died. It would save time.

Not only did Glory Anne Kendall's suicide make the front page—it was a small community, after all—but the paper had a photograph of her as well. I put money in the reader and made copies of the article, but I read it sitting there anyway. According to the paper, Glory had taken a large dose of laudanum to kill herself. Her father gave a statement claiming that since her brother's suicide she had been melancholy and took no joy in life. The paper said that Rupert Kendall had hanged himself from the tree in the backyard in November 1921. They described Rupert as being a “tormented soldier.”

Sandy Kendall had even shown the police a vial of laudanum that he had found among his daughter's things. There was a photograph of him holding the vial up for the paper. Sandy was described as the son of a “northern banker” who had followed in his father's footsteps. He was of statuesque build and great height, towering over everybody at the crime scene, including his distraught son Whalen.

I then put in a new microfilm for 1921 and found the article about Rupert Kendall. The headline read, “The Great War Claims Yet Another Life.” Straight up, the article portrayed Rupert as disturbed and unable to live within society since returning from France. He'd participated in the second Battle of the Somme, where American casualties were enormous. The article also said that Rupert had not returned to Missouri directly after the war, and for months nobody knew where he was. Finally, he returned home and literally never left the sanctuary of the grounds on Haggeman Road.

Neighbors talked of seeing him sitting on the front porch; occasionally he would sit in the backyard and stare at the giant oak tree—the tree where they had found his body. Other neighbors claimed to have heard screaming from the house. They said that upon visiting, they would find Rupert “unruly,” “angry,” and “wild.”

One woman told a story of how her dog had become ill and, rather than let the dog suffer, her husband had put it out of its misery by shooting it in the backyard. According to the woman, when Rupert heard the gunshot, he jumped off of the porch and ran around the yard screaming. It had taken his sister, Glory, two hours to coax him out of his hiding place behind the shed.

The thing that struck me the most was the fact that Rupert hadn't shot himself at all. He'd hanged himself. Which meant that either the blood in his room was due to an incident that had not resulted in Rupert's death, or it belonged to somebody else. Possibly his brother, Whalen.

Finding the report of Whalen's suicide would take more time. I knew it had to have happened sometime between June and December of 1922, but not knowing exactly when meant that I had to skim each paper or chance passing it up. I could almost bet that Whalen's suicide would make the front page, since he was the last child of the family and the third to have ended his life tragically within one year's time. I mean, what editor wouldn't have put that on the front page?

Sure enough, August of 1922, I found it on the front page. The headline read, “Third Tragedy to Strike Kendall Family.” August! That meant Sandy Kendall's children had all taken their own lives within nine months. Nine months! In the time it took to bring a new life into the world, an entire family had checked out. It was overwhelming, nearly more than I could stand.

I read the article on Whalen with great interest, since I really didn't know anything about him. There was a photograph of him with a smaller photograph of each of his siblings. The author spent a great deal of time pondering the same damn questions I had been pondering. What the hell had happened? Whalen, it appeared, had served in the military as well, but had never seen front-line carnage like Rupert. According to his father, Whalen didn't have to go to war, since he was married and his wife was pregnant, but he insisted it was the right thing to do and went off anyway. Interestingly, although he didn't leave until after Rupert had left, he returned within six months. Whalen and his wife lived next door to Sandy and Glory during his brother's absence in France. After Whalen's wife gave birth to a daughter, his wife unexpectedly took the child and up and left in the middle of the night. No note, no word as to where she had gone or why. Whalen sold his house and moved back in with his father and sister. This would have been about 1919, just before Rupert returned. Neighbors painted Whalen as a dutiful son who had given up everything for his father and brother. Evidently, he'd had plans to leave for New Orleans to start over and begin a business venture, but when Rupert returned, Whalen realized there was no way he could leave his father and Glory to deal with Rupert on their own.

According to the article, Whalen had shot himself in his brother's room.

I sat back and rubbed my eyes. Then I sighed and hit the print button. I left the library a few minutes later with my photocopies documenting three young lives gone horribly wrong.

I called Stephanie once again. “Steph, is Geena there yet?”

“Yes, she got here about half an hour ago,” she said.

“Would you guys like me to bring you back some lunch?”

“Oh, sure, where are you going?”

“I thought about hitting Steak-n-Shake,” I said.

“I want a steakburger and a strawberry shake. And…” There was a pause as she waited for Geena to decide what she wanted to eat. “Geena wants a steakburger and a large caffeine.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Oh, and she wants an order of fries.”

“Good.”

“And a bowl of chili.”

I laughed. “You think she's hungry?”

“Just a bit,” she said with humor in her voice.

I stopped and got our lunch and then drove back to New Kassel with my car smelling like grease and onions. I know that sounds gross, but it actually smelled really good.

When I entered the Gaheimer House, Geena was coming down the stairs, pulling her white gloves off. Stephanie called out, “Back here!” I motioned for Geena to meet me in the kitchen, where we all sat around and ate our lunch. I had a turkey club with fries.

“So what's the deal with the quilts?” Stephanie asked, taking a drink of her shake.

I explained to her about the Kendall house and Glory Kendall and my plan to purchase all of the quilts, even if I didn't get the house.

“How exciting,” she said. “Something new in town. That'll shake everybody up.”

“What did you learn today?” Geena asked.

I filled her in on most of my discoveries, then stopped and wondered about a few things out loud. “It still makes no sense to me, though. Rupert killed himself first, in November of '21, and yet around Christmas Glory begins quilting again, and she makes this big deal of stating how her legacy is her quilts. I mean, you get the feeling that she was on the comeback, not spiraling the other way. Then she ends her life in June with an unfinished quilt in the frame. Does that make sense?”

Geena shook her head and thought about it. “Not really,” she said.

“Also, Rupert hanged himself.”

“But the blood?”

“There's blood?” Stephanie asked.

“It's his brother's. For some reason Whalen chose to shoot himself in Rupert's room,” I said. “The more I dig, the more questions I come up with.”

“Isn't that the way it always works?” Stephanie said, smiling.

“True,” I said. “I'm going to check the St. Louis County library this week. Something of this magnitude would have drawn the attention of the St. Louis papers.”

“I would think so,” Geena agreed.

“Maybe those papers could shed a little more light on the why of this whole situation.”

“What did you learn about the quilts?” Geena asked.

“Oh, my gosh. I almost forgot! Glory quilted probably fifty quilts in her life. We recovered how many?”

“Nine finished, and the one in the frame for sure,” Geena said.

“Well, a few of the others without initials might be hers, as well. She documented who received her quilts as gifts, that's the cool part. And,” I said, pulling a sheet of paper out of my back pocket, “I have descriptions of quilts that her mother and grandmother made, and one by her great-grandmother. So we should be able to see if any of the quilts we recovered are those.”

“Let's go see,” she said. “I can't wait another second. I want to see if I'm right.”

After we washed our hands, all three of us hurried up the steps to the second floor, where Geena had spread whichever quilt she was studying on the full-sized poster bed.

“This one I'm looking at now I would say was made in the late 1840s. It's a coxcomb design made in red and green on a white background,” she said.

“Why is there only a border on three sides?” Stephanie asked.

“Well, you have to understand, back then, most quilts were never going to be hung on a wall. They were made for the bed. The missing border is the top of the quilt that would either be hidden under pillows or pulled over the pillows and tucked down by the headboard. You'd never see it. You'll also find some quilts that have what looks like two missing square pieces at the bottom. Those were to accommodate the posters at the end of the bed.”

“Oh,” I said. “Makes sense.”

I checked my notes. Glory had written about a green and red coxcomb made by her great-grandmother on her way from Rhode Island to what is now Michigan, sometime in the 1840s. “You're exactly right,” I said.

“How'd you do that?” Stephanie asked Geena.

“A lot of it's about knowing what patterns were popular.”

“I could make a coxcomb quilt right now,” I said. “I'd probably pull my hair out in the process, since it's appliquéd, but I could do it now. How can you tell it wasn't made forty or however many years after that design went out of fashion?”

“That's when you have to rely on knowing what fabrics were available, what oxygen and light do to certain materials over time, dyes, that sort of thing. You know how there were no true yellow roses before a specific year?”

“No, I didn't know that,” I said.

“Well, I can't remember the year, but it took breeding and a freak of nature to get a true yellow rose to happen,” she said. “Same thing with colors of dyes and fabrics. Today we can create any color fabric we want, but not so a century ago. At one time there was a definite limited color palette. There was no fuchsia or chartreuse for an eighteenth-century quilter. So one way to document the age of a quilt is to know what colors were available, how the colors were made, and what effect time and elements have on each color.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling really stupid.

“The brown in that quilt over there was most likely a brilliant green at one time.”

“So this one belonged to her great-grandmother,” I said.

“Yes, what was her great-grandmother's name?” Geena asked.

“I don't know, but that I can find out,” I said. I might not be able to date fabric, or know when a yellow rose was first developed, but by golly, I could hunt down somebody's great-grandmother.

“What about crazy quilts?” Stephanie asked.

“You won't find one of those prior to 1876, and very few were made after 1900 or 1910. Until, of course, they came into fashion again. I just made one last year.”

Stephanie smiled. “Can we keep her?” she asked me.

I laughed and was about ready to say something when the doorbell rang. “I'll get it.”

I went down the stairs and opened the door. It was Maddie Fulton.

“Maddie, what a nice surprise.”

She handed me a big bouquet of roses, which I, of course, buried my nose in. It's the first thing you do when you see a rose. Stick your nose in it. Of course, that's the first thing I do with almost everything. At least according to my husband.

“Come in,” I said, and stepped aside for her. “What brings you here?”

“I wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you've put into the rose show. All of the advertisements, setting up booths, the whole bit,” she said.

“Oh, Maddie, that's my job,” I said.

“Well, I still want to thank you,” she said. “I also wanted to let you know that I'm getting the quilts together that Glory gave my grandmother. The more I think about it, the more I really want you to display them.”

“Oh, of course,” I said. “At the very least, I want to get photographs of them.” Maddie looked like she had something else on her mind, but she didn't say anything. “Would you like to see the ones we recovered from the Kendall house?”

“I'd love to, just some other time,” she said. “I'm on my way to a garden club meeting.”

“Oh, hey, was your grandmother's name Elspeth Bauer?”

“Yes,” she said, looking surprised. “How did you know that? And why do you want to know?”

“Glory mentioned your grandmother in her quilt journal. Nothing major, she just mentioned giving Elspeth some of her quilts,” I said.

“I think I have a few photographs of my grandmother and Glory together,” she said. “I'll look those up for you, too.”