Ben Bones & The Deadly Descendants

By Michael Havelin

Ben Bones, Genealogical Consultant and self-described Articulator of Family Skeletons, has been hired by Amelia to help her adult children gain insight into their family history. It’s mother's mistaken hope that the knowledge will straighten out their messed up lives. Ben Bones is on the trail of genealogical truth once again, but what he fi nds isn't reassuring to either the alcoholic mother or her second husband, Arthur Ludlum, who happens to be her murdered husband's former business partner.

There’s more, of course: Rome, Georgia’s Ice Pick Murders; the murders within the family; the missing town of Tulip; the hidden twin brother... and as usual, Ben Bones is caught right in the middle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Havelin
• Release date: Nov 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466161306

Michael Havelin

Michael F. Havelin has worked as a musician (Bougalieu, Old Pros, Cacti Delicti), author ("Photography for Writers"; "Practical Manual of Captive Animal Photography"), photographer (nature, motorcycle roadracing), publisher ("Shooter's Rag" photography magazine; "Dialed In" motorcycle roadracing newspaper), teacher (computers, sign language, photography), lawyer (un-civil), woodworker, and interpreter (ASL). Havelin is a Mensan and runs a mystery writers critique group (wncmysterians.org). A Yankee by birth, he now lives and creates in Asheville, North Carolina.

Book preview

Ben Bones and The Deadly Descendants

By Michael F. Havelin

Copyright 2011 All rights reserved.

Published by Michael F. Havelin at Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-4661-6130-6 (electronic edition)

Ben Bones, Genealogical Consultant and self-described Articulator of Family Skeletons, has been hired by Amelia to help her adult children gain insight into their family history. It’s mother's mistaken hope that the knowledge will straighten out their messed up lives.

Ben Bones is on the trail of genealogical truth once again, but what he finds isn't reassuring to either the alcoholic mother or her second husband, Arthur Ludlum, who happens to be her murdered husband's former business partner.

There’s more, of course:

Rome, Georgia’s Ice Pick Murders;

the murders within the family,

the missing town of Tulip;

the hidden twin brother . . .

and as usual,

Ben Bones is caught right in the middle.

Michael F. Havelin has worked as a musician, author, photographer, publisher, teacher, lawyer, woodworker, and interpreter. Yankee by birth, he now lives and creates in Asheville, North Carolina.

Watch for other Ben Bones genealogical mysteries at your favorite ebook stores.

Read the entire series.

Info on other Ben Bones mysteries can be found at:

http://www.benbones.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Ben Bones and The Deadly Descendants

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue 1 – Eight Years Before

Prologue 1 – Death of a Honda

The First Day

Chapter 1 – It All Began

Chapter 2 – Meeting the Family

Chapter 3 – The Coliseum Motel

Chapter 4 – Truth in Poetry?

Chapter 5 – A Trip to the Morgue

Chapter 6 – Reporting In

Chapter 7 – Wendy Comes to Call

The Second Day

Chapter 8 – Art’s Artless Approach

Chapter 9 – Rupert Wells

Chapter 10 – I Go to Prison

Chapter 11 – Brother Bart

Chapter 12 – After the Crash

Chapter 13 – Apology From Hell

Chapter 14 – Recap and a Plan

Chapter 15 – Hijinks at Jinky’s

The Third Day

Chapter 16 – Digging Up Charlie

Chapter 17 – Ludlum’s Mythomania

Chapter 18 – An Other Woman

Chapter 19 – So Many Holes

Chapter 20 – Slippery Footing

Chapter 21 – Wendy’s Gambit

Chapter 22 – Peter’s Folly

The Fourth Day

Chapter 23 – Denouement

Appendix

Descendants of Frances Bartram Gaines

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Ron Spivey, Death Row Inmate at Jackson State Prison, Jackson, Georgia, and fellow Mensa member, for his unique perspective on life inside.

The warden and his staff at Hays State Prison, Trion, Georgia, for the tour without commitment. (They wanted to be anonymous.)

Sam Cordle, Jr, Clerk of Court for Chattooga County, Kim Ward and other staff members, for explaining the Chattooga County property and criminal records and helping me find my way around their domain.

Gene Espy, Editor of Summerville News, for the history of his paper and tour of the plant.

Agnes Newcomer, for asking tough questions about character, plot, continuity, and all that other important stuff that writers have to pay attention to.

My cohorts at the Literary Round Table’s Fiction Focus Group who read it all, pointed out the inconsistencies and stupidities, and made lots of rude noises, and gave constructive suggestions. Thanks, guys and gals.

The WNC Mysterians, my writers’ group in Asheville, North Carolina, who refused to let me release this book to the e-publishing world until they had ripped through it one more time.

All the writers who preceded me and whose works I’ve enjoyed and learned from.

And last but not least, my parents, who encouraged me to read and write as a child. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Prologue I – Eight Years Before

A thin deadly piston, the ice pick rose and fell, rose and fell, rhythmically, mechanically, punching through jacket, shirt, flesh, organs, blood spurting anew with each hit. Again, again, again, stabbing, and stabbing again.

Falling to his knees, the man’s wild eyes sought his assailant’s face.

"Yoouuu . . . A stab in his neck, in his face, his eye, his neck again. He gurgled, Yoouuu . . . g g g g . . ." He collapsed, blood flowing from so many holes.

Powerful arms encircled the killer from behind, dragging the killer off. The stabbing stopped.

"Stop! You’ve got to stop!"

"But I haven’t finished killing him yet." A pleading whine.

The ice pick rose and fell through empty air. The killer was dragged backwards away from the moaning man on the ground, his life puddling around him in the cool evening air.

Prologue II – Death of a Honda

Why would anyone want to kill a genealogist? I’m Ben Bones, a freelance genealogist, and I wanted to know why anyone would want to kill me.

Of course, I didn’t have time to think about it when it happened. It was over too quickly. It was only later, at the hospital, that I had the leisure to consider the situation in all its detail and try to sort out its ramifications.

Terror in the broad daylight of late afternoon is far more terrifying than terror in the night, when we all expect to be afraid. Terror in daylight, in the open with blue sky above and rolling rural countryside surrounding you is a purer terror, more frightening for its clarity, but until it happened to me I'd never had reason to notice the phenomenon. But it was going to be my day.

***

My neon green Honda Accord was working perfectly, smoothly handling the sweeping curves of the easy north Georgia mountain. It truly was a great little car. It suited my bachelor lifestyle and semi-sophisticated fantasy self-image. It consistently ran well with low maintenance, and felt sporty enough without being ostentatious or too vigorous for me to handle. After all, I wasn’t a professional racer, except in my own mind.

I’d just come from the prison, Robert Johnson’s haunting tune Hellhound on My Trail blossomed from the stereo, and life was good. The sky was perfectly clear and there was no sign of the thunderstorm that had caught me earlier. The music was prophetic, but of course, I had no suspicion. You never know what’s going to happen until it’s way too late.

I had just crested the top of the mountain and passed the turnoff to James Sloppy Floyd State Park. After a little twist, the road straightened out for the downhill run, my southbound side reducing to one lane while the northbound direction maintained two lanes for slow climbers and those who were a bit quicker or had less patience.

He must've come out of a side road, 'cause I hadn't seen him along the way or in my mirrors. He was driving a big white step van, a one-piece box and chassis, and the attack was direct and vicious. It was no accidental lapse of driver attention.

The first strike hit the left rear corner of my Honda, crushing in the wheel well. I heard the tire squealing as it rubbed against the crushed fender. He immediately hit me again further forward on my driver side. I saw his huge bulk coming at my door, and then . . . WHAM! He must've pulled to the right just at the instant of impact. I stomped on the brakes to try falling behind him, but the effect was totally unexpected: the Honda went into an inexorable spin.

The world seemed to go 'round, oh so slowly, and I knew that all control was gone. I braced for the impact . . . but it didn't come. I spun forever, round . . . round . . . but my forward momentum complicated the physics of the moment, carrying me down the road . . . no, toward the edge of the road . . . aaahhh! The Honda dropped suddenly . . . into the roadside gully . . . and I knew the ride, and with it my life, were at an end. But they weren't. Not quite.

The front edge of the car fell, but the ditch was deep, maybe all of six or eight feet, and the back end lifted off the ground. Man, I went over! Bang, slam, bump, bump, bump . . . Another dreamy flip, a splash into the creek at the bottom, and then a brutally uncivilized slam as a broken tree trunk punched through the passenger side of the front window. The car stopped rolling. It was over.

I sat. I breathed. I hurt. I was shaking uncontrollably, but I was alive. The roof of the car was touching the top of my head. Had I been thrown up out of my seat? A glimpse from my right eye said no. The roof of the car was definitely crunched in toward me. What about my left eye? I wiped at it and my hand came away bloody. But I could see with it. There was a cut above it. I pressed it with my palm. My skull hurt where I pressed. I’d hit something, and I’d hit it hard.

Someone had just run me off the road. There was no mistake in it either; it had been done on purpose. My anger roared up, then dissipated when it found no point of focus. Who? Why? I was nobody. I wasn't James Bond. I wasn't Nick Charles. I was Benjamin Bones, freelance genealogist and private citizen. Harmless. Just another lost soul in a hostile world. Not worth killing. But someone had just tried, pretty damn effectively too . . . except that they had failed. I hoped they’d left the scene of their recent mayhem.

I grabbed the door handle. Nope. The driver side door was jammed shut. I tried to move to the passenger seat, but was caught somehow. My god, I was trapped! What about fire? They always blew up after crashing in the movies. What really happened in these situations? I was about to find out. Wait. The seat belt. Yes, the seat belt! That was what saved me. Without it, I would have been bounced around like a marble in a tin can and broken to bits, maybe tossed out altogether. It was still keeping me in the car. I released the belt and moved to my right. Ow! Little squares of safety glass bejeweled my beautiful Honda’s deluxe interior.

The wreck shuddered, rocked from side to side. Oh, no . . . going over again! Wrong. Someone was pulling on the windowless passenger door. It creaked, opened a bit, creaked some more, opened wider. Was it my assailant, the guy who drove the van? I had to fight him off, not let him get to me. He’d tried to kill me!

A pair of big hands reached in. A face, dark brown, gray stubble, eyes wide, followed them. Y’all right? Can ya’ move? Better get out of there now, if’n ya’ can. The accent was pure Georgia to my Northern ear, but the meaning was clear enough. It was help, not murder, on this man’s face. I worked my way toward him, into callused workingman’s hands that reached out for me. Gently but steadfastly I was eased out of the wreck, out of my Honda Accordion.

Somehow, I had survived, but I didn’t think I’d been meant to.

The First Day

Chapter 1 - It All Began

My adventure had begun a couple of weeks ago with a simple phone call, as these things usually do.

The bedside clock said 8:25, and the daylight infiltrating its way between the blinds told me it was morning. It had been a long evening but I didn't remember its middle or its end. Another blackout? Had I been somewhere, done something incredibly stupid yet highly memorable? I’d started by sipping my Drambuie at home again, alone and unobserved. Now my head hurt, slowly and consistently, a turnbuckle inexorably tightening between my temples, crushing my skull from the inside. If I looked as bad as I felt I wouldn’t need a Halloween mask to terrify the neighborhood.

The phone . . . that's what woke me, and it continued to ring, patient, persevering, seeking my attention. I looked at the bedside table, half expecting to see a cartoon telephone dancing up and down, one white-gloved hand pointing to the headset as if telling me where to grab it, and right away too. Why didn't they just give up? It was too early for anyone to call, and too damn painful. I wasn't the hot item on this week's social calendar. Was it another bill collector? This was a morning to just lie in bed and hurt for while. I had no pressing appointments for the day, just a pressing headache.

I reached for the phone anyway. My voice came from a deep dark grave. Yes? Ben Bones here.

Silence for a second. Then a woman's voice, a cigarette smoker's rasp . . . with a sweet Georgia lilt to it.

Mr. Bones. I'm glad I found you at home. Surely she was kidding. My dear friend Marjorie Tanner recommended you quite highly. She said you did some excellent genealogical research on her family and I was wondering if you might could help our family out, too.

There was something wrong with her, even to my hung over analytical circuits. Her voice was middle-aged but worn, definitely a smoker's voice with a grate and rattle that gave it a cutting edge. But there was something else too.

Well, genealogy is my business, I quipped, then winced as my head rebounded from my lame witticism. Humor hurt.

I was wondering if you had any time in the near future to do some work on my family. Actually, it’s my deceased husband’s ancestry that I need to learn about. It’s for my children’s sake. Frankly, I don’t really care. After an appropriate pause, You understand.

Brother, did I detect an attitude here? I didn’t have to dig too far. Yes, of course. I’ve had a number of clients who want family information for other people’s enlightenment. It happens all the time. My head clanged inside with the effort at coherency. Listen, Mrs . . . uh . . .

Ludlum. Amelia Cortez Gaines Ludlum. We live in Rome . . . Rome, Georgia, that is.

Well, Mrs. Ludlum . . .

Call me Amelia. Everyone does. Courtly but endearing at the same time.

The effort I had to put into this communication was costly. Yes . . . Amelia . . . I cleared the mucus out of my throat as quietly as I could. It’s a bit early and I’m not at my desk. If you give me your number, I’ll call you back in a couple of hours. I reached over to my bedside table. The free-floating ballast in my head shifted mightily. I pulled a ball point and scratch pad over onto the bed. The digital alarm clock crashed to the floor. Lying on my side, I fought to steady myself and draw my attention back to the task.

She’d obviously heard the clatter. A rough night, Mr. Bones? I understand completely. Somehow I knew she did understand. I guess it is a bit early for some. I haven’t been to bed yet myself. She paused, giving me time to comprehend. I’d be happy to give you my number but, I’ll be in Atlanta today to do some shopping and thought we might meet in person to discuss our arrangements.

I panicked. No, wait. She couldn’t be coming over right away. You’re not coming over right now, are you?

She gave a little laugh. Her voice might have been a little slurred. My hearing was, too. Had she not been to bed because she’d been up drinking all night? Naaah.

I still haven’t left home yet.

Where was that? Did you say Rome?

That’s correct, Mr. Bones. Rome, Georgia. Was she teasing me? It’ll take me a couple of hours to get into town. We could meet at, say, 11 o’clock. Is that time enough?

I looked at my alarm clock lying there on the floor. It blinked 12:00 in a steady, rhythmic, red-eyed myopia that showed something had broken when it hit the floor.

I wanted to go back to sleep, to fall deep into painless oblivion, but this woman was making an appointment to see me, today. The last thing I wanted to do today was talk business. But business had to be taken care of.

Yeah, that would be great, I squeezed out.

Fine. I’ll be at your apartment at 11. Please don’t go to any trouble on my account. A click, and she was gone. A dream? I doubted it. Well, I’d have to get up and try to pull my bachelor apartment into some kind of order, at least clean up the debris of last night’s drinking.

Yep, it always begins with a simple phone call.

I had another half hour of sack time, spent hoping hopelessly for sleep but really just lying there hurting. Every movement caused my head to . . . well, there isn’t an exact word for the quality of a world-class hangover’s obstinate agonies. It’s a subtle kind of hurt and it doesn’t end. And it’s not there all the time. You’ll have some free time, whole minutes when you think you’re all better and then you’ll have to breathe or a bird will twitter and the vice slams shut on your head again, tighter and tighter as you grimace and try to shrink away from it. But the vice follows you until the guy at the crank handle decides to let you off, to let you think that you’re all better until the next telephone ring, or bird call, or necessary breath.

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do it again, that Drambouie was for a different type of person than me, a more elegant drinker, someone with a little brandy snifter and a raised pinkie. Someone in a tuxedo instead of jeans, someone who sipped delicately instead of glugged with both hands gripping the jug. I loved the taste, the silkiness as it flowed down to warm my guts, the staggering drunk that resulted every damn time I got started. It was too expensive to drink all the time, so I saved it for special occasions. Then I’d go buy a bottle, just a small one, you understand, and then I’d proceed to drink it all. It didn’t last long at my place. But then, no alcohol did for long. I guess I have a drinking problem. There, now I’ve admitted it. Do I get a beer as reward? How’d that old joke go? Yeah, I’ve got a drinking problem . . . can’t get enough. For some of us it’s not very much of a joke at all.

The doorbell rang at exactly 11. I’d had a shower and some orange juice and was becoming functional again, functioning in spite of my self-inflicted discomfort. I’d scrambled through the place picking up the worst of the mess, mostly papers and magazines that tend to pile up on any flat surface available in my life. I’d tossed the empty Drambouie bottle and pizza box, and washed the few dishes and glasses that were in the sink. I’m usually pretty good about keeping my digs relatively clean, having lived with roaches in a few different places. No sense encouraging the little opportunists. Let them work for their keep. I opened the door, not knowing what to expect.

Amelia Ludlum stood there, tall, slim, and fashionable, not heavily made-up, beautiful in her mid-40s, almost a vision from Vogue. Thick silver-streaked black hair was pulled simply into a thick twist at the back of her head. Her skin was a light golden color, richer, deeper than just a tan, giving her an exotic look. She put her hand out and I took it. Her handshake was firm but not competitive or overbearing, her hand cool to the touch.

Mrs. Ludlum? Hi, I’m Benjamin Bones. Come on in. Make yourself at home. I stepped aside to allow her passage. She flowed over the threshold and on into the living room. My eyes swiveled on stalks to watch. My head followed. I closed the door and followed her with the rest of me.

She delicately took a seat on my ratty, caved-in couch. I perched on the edge of my overflowing desk, trying not to knock the piles of paper off.

I’m sorry about this morning. I mean . . .

She interrupted with Georgia sweetness, Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Bones. I know how it can be. Her voice had more of a rasp to it than I remembered, but her