Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

Devin was looking into the possibility that Claude had been murdered. Why else would he disappear when Peggy's father was trying to arrange for his citizenship so he could marry her? Why would he abandon her? And why else would he leave the paintings behind? He was not listed on any of the departing ships' manifests. The Army kept good records."
    "Oh," I interrupted. "Now I know why Devin spent time at Camp Lejeune with his civilian contractor friend. He must have been looking through the old Camp Davis records, trying to trace Claude."
    Mickey continued, "Claude Schroeder never returned to Germany. That's because he never left the US! He's dead! History!"
    "But Uncle J.C. was too young to have murdered anybody. He was only ten years older than me," Babe said.
    "Wait a minute!" Kelly interjected. "Not J.C. It was William. I know something about this. Grandpa Joe was always talking about the past. He was in his nineties when I lived with him during high school. The past was so real to him, the way it is with old people. He reminisced about Peggy and William all the time, and his wife Marty. How Marty had worried so much when William was MIA that it ruined her health. About how changed William was he returned home from the war. William hated all Germans. He blamed every one of them for the neglect he'd suffered when his plane was shot down and he was injured."
    "So it was William who killed Claude!" Mickey declared.
    Kelly moved to the edge of her seat, her elbows on her knees, her hands chopping the air excitedly. "That would explain why William hanged himself. I remember Grandpa Joe talking about that too. Peggy and J.C. were the ones who found him hanging from a rafter in the barn. The experience sent Peggy into an irreversible depression. It hardened J.C., made him mean. After Mother's birth, Peggy was so depressed she was dysfunctional and she never recovered. He told me that once when I asked him about her dying in an asylum. But it wasn't simple postpartum depression, it was losing Claude, then finding William's body. That was too much. She went insane."
    "But you're saying that William killed Claude and J.C. knew," I said.
    "Well, I never realized that before," Kelly said. "I always believed the story they handed Peggy, that Claude abandoned her. But now, I agree with Mickey, William killed Claude. Probably he couldn't stand the thought that a German had been his sister's lover, and that a baby was coming. He must have been in a blind rage. And J.C. either knew about it or was his accomplice."
    "But where is the body?" Melanie asked.
    "Why, I suppose it's buried out there somewhere on the farm property, covered over with streets, houses and lawns by now," Babe said.
    A sudden insight caused me to gasp. "No, not there. I know where it is!"

28

    I telephoned Jon and did my best to explain the scenario our group had pieced together. Jon called Officer Meriweather . Meriweather said he had to confirm things with the JAG's office and he'd get back to Jon.
    An hour later Jon arrived at the beach house. " Meriweather and a few officers are going to meet us at the Lauder house. Since it's in Wilmington PD's jurisdiction, Detective Diane Sherwood is going to meet us there. Let's go."
    Everyone jumped up.
    "No, we can't all go. Just Ashley and me. You ready?" he asked me.
    I was ready, had quickly showered and put on shorts and a tee shirt, sandals.
    Ted followed us out. "Call us and let us know the outcome," he said, and we assured him we would.
    As Jon drove away from the beach, I filled him in on the details, and we speculated about J.C.'s motives.
    "He must have known he was a mediocre painter," I said. "Kelly said he'd started taking art classes because he had been inspired by the drawings of one of the prisoners. That was just the story he told. I think he later realized he wasn't good enough. When hostilities ended with Germany, some of the pressure must have been off so that Babe's grandfather might have been able to get Claude posted to their house, or the farm, something like that. In two years time , Claude had produced dozens of paintings. Grandpa Joe had liked Claude and was willing to accept him as a son-in-law. He had started the paperwork to obtain citizenship for him."
    Jon continued the thread. "Then after William killed Claude, William and J.C. hid his body, then told their father and Peggy that Claude had run away. Peggy would have felt abandoned and ashamed. Later, J.C. hid all the paintings until