The Mulberry Tree Read online

  Harper was said to be “in love” with Kyle—and this was in 1953, when no attempt to understand such a love was made.

  And then there was Frederick Burgess, a murderer at four years old. Everyone in Calburn knew the story of Burgess, as he was called, and his older brother, Bobbie. Bobbie Burgess was one of those rare children who possessed scholastic aptitude and athletic ability in equal abundance. He was the head of the debating team and captain of the football team, and on Sunday afternoons, he tutored underprivileged children in reading. On the twelfth of July, 1940, when he was sixteen years old, Bobbie was washing the family car while his four-year-old brother Frederick played inside. A neighbor, also outside, saw what happened. The child, playing that he was his big brother and driving, moved the gearshift. The car, parked on an incline, rolled backward, trapping Bobbie’s foot, then running over him and killing him instantly.

  Frederick did not inherit the intelligence or the athletic ability that his deceased brother had had, and it was said in Calburn that his parents despised their younger son for what he’d done, for what he’d taken from them. In fact, one person in Calburn said that Burgess’s father had often expressed the wish that his second child had never been born.

  Bailey looked up from the book. “I don’t think I can read any more,” she said as she closed the book. “High school is difficult enough, but what those kids had to go through was horrible.”

  “But if the torture ended when they graduated, why did all the rest of the bad stuff happen to them?”

  “I don’t know,” Bailey said. “Maybe it was their destiny. Are you sure you have the address?”

  “Yes,” Matt said distractedly.

  “What are you reading?” She put her head on his shoulder.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking how everything leads back to the Golden Six. No matter what we want to know, it always leads back to those six boys.”

  “Your father,” Bailey said softly.

  “It happened before he was my father. Anyway, I was thinking that the more we find out about them, the more likely we are to find out who Manville trusted.”

  “And if that person is still alive,” Bailey said.

  “Yes. If,” Matt answered.

  Twenty-seven

  “He’s never had a visitor before,” the nurse said to Bailey and Matt a few minutes after they entered the rest home. “Well, a couple of friends from work have visited him, but no family.”

  “Where did he work?” Matt asked.

  “High school football coach,” the nurse said, looking at them in speculation, as though to ask why they didn’t know that. “If he’s your uncle—” she began, looking at Matt.

  “Family feud,” Matt said. “You know how those things are.”

  “Sure,” she said as she stopped in front of a door. “All right, now here are the rules. He’s a very sick man, so if you upset him, out you go. Understand?”

  Both Bailey and Matt nodded as they stepped past the woman to enter the room, and right away Bailey wanted to leave. The man on the bed looked as though he barely weighed a hundred pounds, and tubes were coming out of him everywhere. His left arm was strapped down, and a drip was slowly entering his veins. An oxygen tube was across his face. Machines all around him measured his breathing and his heart rate.

  “Matt, I—” Bailey began, her hand on his arm.

  But Matt stepped forward to the man’s bedside. “Mr. Burgess,” Matt said firmly, “we’d like to ask you about the night Frank McCallum died.”

  In the next second all hell broke loose as the man opened his eyes and alarm bells started screaming. In an instant the door opened, and a doctor and two nurses ran into the room, pushing Bailey and Matt aside.

  Bailey stood back, clutching Matt’s hands in hers as they watched the doctor examine the patient and the nurses switch off the machine alarms. After a moment Bailey heard a voice say, “I’m all right. Get off of me!” and she breathed a sigh of relief. “I was having a bad dream,” the voice said. The doctor and two nurses were blocking their view, but Bailey knew it was Burgess speaking.

  “Would all of you get the hell out of here and let me talk to my guests?” the voice said.

  The doctor turned around and gave Bailey and Matt a hard look. He hadn’t been fooled by his patient’s lie. “You upset him again like that, and I’ll personally escort you out of here,” he said, then the three of them left the room.

  Bailey walked to his bedside. The man in bed was emaciated, wasted by whatever was eating his life away, but his eyes were bright and alive. And she could see past his wrinkled face to the young man she’d seen so many pictures of.

  “I think we’d better leave,” she said. “We’ve—”

  “What?” he said. “Already almost killed me?” Burgess said, then coughed.

  Bailey got a glass of water with a straw in it off the table and held it while the man drank.

  During this, Matt had been standing at the foot of the bed, his hands white-knuckled as he gripped the rails.

  “You’re Kyle’s boy, aren’t you?” Burgess said. “You look like him, only fatter.”

  “He eats a lot,” Bailey said, smiling.

  Burgess turned to her. “And who are you?”

  Before Bailey could speak, Matt said, “Lucas McCallum’s widow.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Bailey said, then sat down on a chair beside the bed. She was sure that this news would certainly kill the man. The machines made some beeps, but no alarms went off.

  “Manville,” Burgess said after a moment. “James Manville. I saw him once. I was in Oregon buying lumber, and someone said that James Manville had just come into town and was going white-water rafting. Like everyone else, I wanted to see him, so I was in the crowd that watched him get in the boat. Just before they took off, he waved at us, and I thought my heart would stop, because I was looking into Luke McCallum’s eyes.”

  “Did he see you?” Bailey asked.

  “Oh, yeah. He saw me, and when he did, the arrogant look of James Manville left his face, and he was that scared little boy again. But I put my finger to my lips and shook my head to let him know that I’d never tell, and Luke smiled back at me. I always liked Luke.”

  “I want to know everything about him,” Bailey said.

  But Burgess smiled. “Sorry. Can’t help you there. All I know is that Frank left town right after graduation, stayed away for a few years, and when he came back, he had a kid with him. I once asked Kyle why we never saw the kid, and Kyle said that he was deformed, so Frank kept him hidden away up in the mountains so people wouldn’t make fun of him. It wasn’t any of my business, so I never asked any questions about him. I never even saw the kid until he was a teenager. He used to sneak down out of the mountains and visit . . . ” Burgess paused for a moment. “A farm. There was a nice little farm on—”

  “Owl Creek Road,” Bailey said. “The old Hanley place.”

  “Yes! That’s it. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes,” Bailey said softly. “It’s beautiful. There’s an old mulberry tree in the back that—” She stopped; the man’s machines had begun to beep wildly. “I’m sorry, I’ve upset you. I think we should go.”

  “No, please don’t leave,” Burgess said. “It’s lonely here, and I’d like to talk. I go days without saying a word. I used to be known as a pretty good storyteller.”

  Bailey looked at Matt, and he smiled.

  Burgess was silent for a moment as he looked from one to the other of them. “Maybe you’d like to hear about the Golden Six and what really happened.”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “We’d like to hear anything you can tell us.”

  For a moment Burgess closed his eyes. “Dying has made me want to tell the truth.” He opened his eyes and looked at Bailey. “It was all caused by that bitch, T. L. Spangler. You know that?”

  “I read most of the book,” Bailey said softly. “All that I could stand to read of it, that is.”

  Burgess shook his head. “No, n