His dad nodded, swept the crumbs from his TV tray and dropped them in the waste basket next to his chair.
“Have the police questioned him in connection with any of these girls?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I’ve asked every officer who’s still speaking to me, and none of them have ever heard of him.”
“So, he’s either very clever, or innocent.”
“He’s not innocent,” Abe grumbled. “He may not be guilty of these murders, but he’s not innocent. There was something…”
“Off about him?”
“Yeah.
“You gotta trust your gut. In all my years of practicing law, it never steered me wrong. When I was in the room with a murderer, my body sensed it, even if my mind tried to remain unbiased. The hair on my arms would stand on end. I’d release adrenaline like I might have to fight for my life. What tips have come out of this?” He picked up the article.
Abe sighed. He told his father about the sightings of a girl who looked like Susie hitchhiking late at night on the Leelanau Peninsula before vanishing without a trace.
His dad pulled a toothpick from his pocket and balanced it on his lips.
“Now that is a strange tale, if there ever was one. What makes you link those stories to this perp?”
“He lives a few miles from that stretch of road.”
His dad frowned, poked at his teeth with the toothpick.
“You don’t think it’s bogus?” Abe asked.
His dad pulled the toothpick out and gazed at it thoughtfully.
“Your mom believed in ghosts. She told me she lived in a haunted house when she was a little girl.”
“A haunted house?” Abe couldn’t hide his skepticism.
“She said they used to hear a woman singing in the night. Her own mother had a priest come out and bless the house, but it didn’t matter. They moved when your mom was eight, but the memories of that house stuck with her. In her twenties, your mom went back to that town and spoke with the sheriff. You can see where you picked up your journalistic leanings.” He winked at Abe. “The sheriff told her someone had murdered a woman in that house five years before your mom’s family moved in. The local police thought the husband killed her, but they never proved it.”
“Are you saying I should believe this girl is haunting that stretch of road?”
Abe’s father leaned back and steepled his fingers on his belly.
“Your mother was convinced the woman from her childhood home had a story to tell. She believes ghosts have unfinished business. If this girl is dead, but is showing up out there, maybe there’s a reason. Tell me about this young man’s family. Does he have parents?”
“I met the mother. Not a warm woman, by any means.”
“What’s her name?”
“Virginia Crow.”
Abe’s father stood, brushed the crumbs from his pants. He ambled over to his phone.
“Jack, it’s Martin Sevett. Retirement’s good. Catching up on all the sleep I missed over the last few decades. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m calling about a woman.” Martin laughed. “Hardly, Jack. My days of womanizing are long gone. Her name’s Virginia Crow. Sure, yeah. Divorced? She’s widowed, okay.”
Abe watched his father scribble onto a little note pad next to his phone. He talked for several more minutes.
“Have time to chat with my son this week?” Martin continued. He mouthed ‘tomorrow’ at Abe, and Abe nodded. “Yep, tomorrow works.”
“Jack Miller’s been on the Board of the Leelanau Historical Society for years. He’s a long-time resident of Glen Arbor, and he’s also a cartographer. He’s a man in the know, so to speak.”
“And he knows Virginia?”
“According to Jack, she’s not an easy woman to know. Widowed over twenty years ago, never remarried, though rumors flew about the dead husband’s brother, also named Crow. He’s a doctor at the sanitarium.”
“The asylum?”
“Yep. Virginia has one son, Spencer. The whole family puts on airs, according to Jack. Her kid was homeschooled, has attended the University of Michigan for the last four years, and works summers for Dr. Marlou in Suttons Bay. The husband died in his sleep, a young man under thirty years old at the time, strange circumstances according to Jack, but that’s just talk.”
“Man, that guy is in the know.”
Martin ripped the sheet of paper from the notepad and handed it to Abe.
Abe looked at the neat, bulleted list of points written in perfect block writing. His father had perfected note-taking during his previous life as an attorney.
“Jack’s number is there at the bottom. He’s at the Historical Museum tomorrow from noon to four. If he doesn’t have the answer, he’ll know who does,” Martin explained.
“Does he know how to talk to ghosts?”
Martin smiled and nodded.
“Wouldn’t put it past him.”
Chapter 34
Abe
“Jack?” Abe asked, approaching the souvenir counter at the Leelanau Historical Museum.
“Jack’s my name, history’s my game,” the man said sticking out his hand. “You must be Martin’s boy. You’ve got that fierce, lawyerly look in your eye, though I hear you’re a newsman.”
“Yeah, I would have opted for a profession raising hairless rats before I spent half a decade in law school.”
Jack chuckled.
“We all must forge our own way. I’d imagine both your parents would have found hairless rats a difficult career to accept from their only son.”
Abe grinned.
“My little sister’s in medical school. She’d have made up for my inadequacies.”
Jack guffawed and walked around the counter.
“I’ve got three daughters myself. A schoolteacher, a mom of six, and a nurse. I love ‘em all just the same.”
“Any sons?”
Jack nodded.
“Two. One followed after me and became a cartographer, the other works as an electrician.”
“Five kids,” Abe wondered. “My house felt crowded with my sister.”
“A house can feel crowded if you’re sitting alone,” Jack told him with a wink. He stopped beside his counter and pulled a rolled map from a canvas bag, spreading it out on the counter before picking up a pair of tiny spectacles and perching them on his wide nose. He was a big man, the type who played football in college, and his largeness seemed out of place in the small museum. “We keep maps of the entire peninsula in the back. I pulled Sapphire Road this morning so you could take a peek at the Crow property.”
Jack placed several Leelanau sand dune paperweights along the edges and picked up a stack of ‘Leelanau is Groovy’ pencils. He put the pencils end-to-end in a large square from Sapphire Road to M-22.
“Technically this property is divided. Half belongs to Mrs. Virginia Crow. The other half belongs to her brother-in-law, Dr. Byron Crow.”
“She owns forty acres?” Abe leaned over the map, staring at the property lines. The back of the property ran right up to M-22. A particular stretch of road along M-22 where people had seen a young woman hitchhiking late at night.
“Yep,” Jack said, tapping his finger along the print. “Mighty fine piece of land right there. I know more than a handful of folks have tried to buy a parcel or two. Used to have lumber kilns out there in the late 1800s.”