Something More Serious to Meow About

Police Chief Arley Socket slowly sipped his second cup of black coffee, ready for another ho-hum day in the tiny backwater of Jericho, Arkansas. He wondered whether today's most serious incidents would include Mrs. Mumford callin' in a panic about her cat Paulie climbing to the highest branch of her oak tree or one of Pa Jones' cows plowing their way through the back 40 pasture fence.

As the chief began paging through this week’s edition of The Morning Call looking for something to relieve his boredom, substitute deputy Rawley Hartnett breathlessly rushed in and bellowed, “Come quick. You gotta rush up to Pa Jones’ farm.”

“Calm down Rawley. Did one of Pa’s cows escape from the barn again?”

The color had drained from the deputy’s face, and he shook so hard it looked like his hat would fall off his head. So Arley hopped into his patrol car and tore out of town with Hartnett in the shotgun seat with the siren blaring and the emergency lights flashing.

They raced across Jones’ field, and the chief slammed on his brakes, almost knocking his second-in-command through the windshield.

“Pa Jones came runnin’ into Rosie’s Cafe this morning and dragged me away from breakfast to show me this,” Rawley said.

Socket looked down and saw a gaping hole about two feet deep in the earth. A black cat meowed loudly and jumped out of a tree near the hole at the sheriff. Buried below the sheriff found a headless corpse.

Pa Jones ran up, out of breath with large beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.

“Came out this morning to herd the cows outta the barn and found this,” he shouted. “Last night I had supper after milkin' all day and spent most of last night watchin’ the livestream of the Razorbacks game, ready to settle in for a nice, restful evening, like every other Thursday.”

The chief moved the head away and threw a few shovelfuls of dirt to the side. This uncovered what looked like some type of diary buried next to the corpse. The entries seemed written in a foreign language, like German or French.

“Have any strangers come out to your place in the last week?” Arley asked. “Heard a number of evangelists recently passed through town on the way to some type of convention in Little Rock.”

“Come to think of it,” the farmer said, “two fellas did stop by my place two nights ago. Claimed they were lookin’ for a hotel where they could stay overnight on their way to a religious meeting at the other end of the state. I couldn’t make out a lot of what they said because they spoke with accents. Sounded like German to me. Told them about the Trendways Motel just outside of town. They left in kinda a hurry, but they was talkin’ kinda loud to each other. May have been arguin’.”

The chief and his deputy then got back into the patrol car and headed for the motel.

Desk Clerk Harry Jamison, told them three men who planned to stay overnight on their way to a church-type gathering had checked in two nights before. He said they spoke English broken up by German and the guy who looked like he headed the group signed in as Hans Rudolphin. He introduced the other two as his brother, Franz, and the third one as Ludwig Friedakendolf, a friend from the old country.

“Just before they got to their room they started screamin' at the third guy and the Rudolphin brothers nearly got into a fist fight with them. Almost had to throw them outta my lobby,” he said. “Looked like they wanted Ludwig to give them some type of book, possibly a diary or journal. Once they got their room key they rushed outta the lobby. After they left, I saw they had dropped the book and I paged through it before runnin' after them and returnin' it to them. I used to teach German part-time in another town before comin’ here, so I could make out some of the writing in the book.”

The chief showed the clerk the book found at the grave site and Jamison said it looked like the same one the guests had fought over.

He said the writings hinted at a 100-year-old feud between the Rudolphin and Friedakendolf families. It looked like the feud had followed the clans to the New World and the brothers wanted to put a stop to it. They apparently had invented the religious convention to cover their tracks.

According to the journal, Johann Rudolphin, the brothers' great-great grandfather, had angered Angelica Friedakendolf, a revered soothsayer. She had put a curse onto the top-achieving male Rudolphin family member every 20 years with the victim running into a brick wall of failure in any career they pursued. Every two decades every business attempted by a male member of the family had collapsed in bankruptcy.

Jamison added “Only two of the travelers checked out in the middle of the night and it looked like they threw a big leather bag into their pickup. It coulda been large enough to carry a corpse and they had trouble loading it. They told me they would continue to the religious convention the next day and the bag contained articles for presentations at their meetings. They also said they needed to stop for gas and asked me about the nearest service station in the area.”

The clerk told them Sam Johnsonian's station was the closest, so he guessed that’s where they headed. The chief and his deputy took off for Johnsonian’s.

Sam said they had filled up at his place and asked directions. They then headed in the direction of the Jones farm.

Harley and Rawley sped back to the farm, where they discovered tire tracks leading across Jones' field to the grave site. The tracks matched the tires on the truck the motel guests had driven.

Hawley put out an all points bulletin on the truck. The sheriff in Jaxsonville, the town just north of Jericho, reported pulling over two men throwing a large package out of the back of a pickup. He retrieved the package and found a human head inside.

Looked like the brothers would go to any lengths to put an end to the curse.