Muletrain to Maggody (27 page)

“If you’re deputizing me,” he said as we went outside, “you’ll have to let me wear your badge tonight.”

“You’re liable to hurt yourself when you try to pin it on.”

“Nobody said being a war correspondent was easy.”

It was very nice to laugh for a change.

Lottie had been lectured since she was in pigtails about the horrible things that befell children who snooped into others’ personal possessions. Being expelled from Sunday school was the least of the punishments that would rain down with the fury of a spring thunderstorm. But she had little choice, since the Headquarters House was decidedly out of the question. She had only a hazy memory of stumbling out the back door and diving under a forsythia, where she’d lost consciousness as a result of either the nasty bump on her head or pure panic. It had been dark when she roused herself, and unpleasantly chilly. It had not occurred to her to put on a cardigan sweater before committing a felony, for surely that’s what it had been.

Somehow she’d survived the night, but by the next morning she was feeling dizzy and disoriented. The yards did not look familiar, nor did the occasional cats that wandered by, pausing to eye her with typical feline aplomb before ambling on about their business. She’d sensed that it would be foolish to go inside the nearby house. For reasons she hadn’t been able to define, it had seemed menacing.

Hunger and a need to deal with matters of physical comfort and hygiene had driven her into an adjoining yard, but again she’d found herself afraid to knock on the door and throw herself on the mercy of whoever appeared. She’d moved on.

When she’d found a gap in a hedge and continued into the next yard, she’d found herself confronting a very elderly woman, who’d been breaking up pieces of bread and tossing them on the patio. Perhaps the woman had seen the envious glint in Lottie’s eyes as the crumbs were attacked by sparrows and finches.

Lottie was unclear what had happened after that, but she’d ended up in a lovely, soft bed in a tiny room, with a cup of tea and a warning to stay there until the woman’s son had packed a bag and left on a trip. And so she had, dozing most of the day and awakening only to wonder where she was.

That evening the woman had reappeared, introduced herself as Mrs. Walter Streek, and invited Lottie downstairs for supper. They’d had soup and watched TV, neither saying much, and retired early.

By Tuesday morning, it had all come back to Lottie, but she had no idea what to do. Was there a warrant for her arrest? Would she be apprehended if she dared set foot out of the house? She’d seen shows on TV in which the police had tapped telephones in order to overhear calls. Could Eula’s and Elsie’s phones been tapped in a similar fashion?

Mrs. Streek had asked no questions, despite the fact Lottie had staggered into the yard in a filthy dress, her hair in disarray and dotted with leaves, her stockings riddled with runs. And Lottie had offered no explanations, which suited them both. She’d taken over kitchen duties, fixing a nourishing breakfast and artful little sandwiches for lunch, and made sure Mrs. Streek was covered with a cozy afghan while she dozed in her favorite chair.

It had been going rather smoothly until a woman had come to the door early that evening. Lottie had hovered in the kitchen until she’d seen that the woman was not a police officer, but a somewhat frowsy creature who most likely was selling something that was overpriced and of poor quality. However, when the woman had broken the news of Mrs. Streek’s son’s death, Lottie had rushed in and hovered anxiously until the woman left.

Lottie realized that she had to stay until arrangements were made for Mrs. Streek, who’d been kind and trusting to a fault. At Mrs. Streek’s request, Lottie had made a long distance call to a Mondale Streek, who’d grudgingly promised to come as soon as he could get away from his office. She’d repeatedly called Harriet Hathaway, but there’d been no answer thus far.

And now, while Mrs. Streek napped in her bedroom, the blinds drawn, Lottie decided to risk eternal damnation (or at least humiliation) and snoop through Wendell’s notebooks and file cabinets in search of a copy of the journal.

His office was cluttered with stacks of periodicals related to the Civil War and various genealogical organizations. Maps of battle sites were pinned on the wall, as well as newspaper clippings and black-and-white depictions of whiskered officers glowering at the camera. Four filing cabinets dominated one wall, each drawer with a neatly printed label. She found one marked “Cotter’s Ridge” and removed a stack of folders to examine while she sat at the desk.

A folder with Henry Largesse’s name contained several pages of notes, some handwritten and others printed from the Internet, and a copy of the journal. Lottie decided she could read it later, even while she and Mrs. Streek watched TV. It was more important to use this time efficiently. She’d always taught her students that this was the key to a household that ran smoothly and with a minimum of fuss.

Wendell had done an admirable job tracing the Largesse family in both the pre– and post–Civil War eras. He’d followed leads on Henry’s sisters and their marriages and offspring, and the offspring of the offspring. He’d determined when and where most of them were buried. It wasn’t, Lottie concluded, very interesting.

She flipped through the other folders with equally detailed information about the Confederate privates who’d done their best to defend the gold that tragic morning in April. Records of births, marriages, and deaths reduced the young boys to nothing more than a compilation of factual trivia.

Only when she at last came to Lieutenant Hadley Parham’s folder did she find a bit of human drama. The Parhams had presided over a vast plantation of several thousand acres, and before the war owned more than seven hundred slaves. Hadley’s sister had died at the age of four, and there were no birth certificates other than Hadley’s. Lottie paused to do a bit of calculation. Hadley had been barely twenty years old when he enlisted and galloped away to defend the South from Northern aggression. He’d been twenty-one when he was declared a casualty at Cotter’s Ridge.

Perplexed, she stopped for a moment. A “casualty”? Acquaintances might be casual, as were impromptu gatherings in the morning for coffee or encounters in the supermarket. Picnics and potluck suppers, where most of the attendees (but not she, of course) wore shorts and sandals. But a gallant boy, hardly a man, bleeding to death on a country road? Hardly casual.

However, she realized she was not using her time wisely and continued reading. Wendell had not been content with a final notation of Hadley’s death at the Skirmish at Cotter’s Ridge. He’d turned his attention back to the family left to cope with the challenges of keeping the plantation productive despite the increasing rebelliousness of the slaves and the blockade that prevented the export of the cotton crop to England. The Historical Society of Crawly County, South Carolina, had provided Wendell with photocopies of the plantation’s accounts, presumably in Hadley’s father’s own handwriting. Horace’s script had been as precise as Wendell’s.

More intriguing was a copy of the certificate of baptism of Felicity Louise, born of Hadley Walpool Parham and Trella, a female slave and the property of Horace Parham, Esq. An illegitimate baby, born to the master’s son and a woman of color. Another document, declaring Felicity Louise to be a legal ward. The baby’s skin must have been light, Lottie thought, for the family to take her into the house to be educated and brought up like a proper young lady. She’d subsequently married and procreated with success.

Lottie, who’d never bothered with frivolous fiction, found herself gazing out the window at the dogwoods and redbuds blooming in the backyards of the adjoining houses, lost in a wistful reverie of a little girl, born in tragic circumstances, her true heritage by necessity hidden, haunted by the fear of exposure, who’d gone on to make a place for herself in Charleston society.

Luckily, Wendell had left a box of tissues next to his computer.

H
ammet was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, as limp as a pile of sodden laundry. Waving Jack away, I sat down and said, “Bored?”

“Bored as a body can git,” he said, sighing. “Last week I would’ve sworn that having nuthin’ to do but eat ice cream and watch TV all day was all I could ever want. Even stomping all over the ridge was better’n this. You won’t let me tag along, and Ruby Bee sez I can’t come in the kitchen anymore after…well, she sez I can’t.”

“You didn’t start a fire, did you?”

He gave me an aggrieved look. “I ain’t that dumb. She said she’d give me a dollar if I cleaned the pantry. I took all the cans down and wiped the shelves, but then I decided it’d look a sight prettier if I pulled off the labels and lined up all the shiny cans. Ruby Bee dint appreciate it.”

“I suppose not.” I thought for a moment, then said, “Why don’t you come sit with Jack and me while we all have lunch?”

“I already et.”

“Sit with us and have a piece of pie. As soon as we’re done, I’m going to need your help. You know that two people were killed yesterday, don’t you?”

Hammet perked up. “It must be that feller out back, the one that keeps peerin’ out the window like he’s waiting for the FBI to surround the motel and take him into custody. I warned you about him yesterday, Arly. He’s got a real surly look to him, like a rabid polecat. His nose is all red and his eyes are real puffy.”

“We’ll have to wait for the FBI to show up before we tackle him. I need to find Hospiss Buchanon’s old place somewhere on Cotter’s Ridge. I realize you’ve been dragged up there for the last two days, but I promise we won’t look for caves.” I poked his shoulder. “I really need your help, Hammet.”

I suppose I expected him to tear up with gratitude, but I was wrong. “What’s in it for me?” he asked.

“I’ll let you stick around until Saturday.”

“My foster ma sez I ain’t supposed to come back till Monday. Besides, I’m the drummer boy in this movie. I got a uniform and a drum. I ain’t learned to play it yet, but I reckon I can do jest fine when the time comes.”

Ruby Bee came out of the kitchen, saw me, and disappeared as though the biscuits were smoldering and the meringue on the cream pies was turning to ash. It was just as well, since I was feeling far from friendly.

Hammet was pretending to be fascinated by the neon signs above the bar, but he was surreptitiously watching me, like a crow on a dead branch.

“Two weeks this summer,” I said.

“A month.”

“Two weeks here, and then a weekend of camping and fishing and that sort of primitive thing.”

“Three weeks and a weekend in Branson.”

I was beginning to get annoyed. “Three weeks, period.”

“What about the camping shit?”

“You can pitch a tent in the pasture behind the Flamingo Motel. Deal?”

Hammet slid off the stool. “I s’pose so,” he said cheerfully. “We kin talk about Branson later. Why do you want to find Hospiss’s shack? There weren’t much standing last I saw it. All you’re gonna find is snakes, spiders, wood rats, and mebbe a nest of rabbits.”

I herded him over to the booth where Jack was sitting. “Hammet has decided to become a union negotiator when he grows up,” I said as I sat down. “That, or an enforcer for the mob. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Ruby Bee had trailed us to take our orders. She put down menus, then glared at me. “You done anything more about finding Lottie? Joyce told me what Eula said about Lottie sneaking into the Headquarters House and getting herself arrested. But then Millicent said she’d heard that Lottie was staying at a homeless shelter on account of having amnesia and not recollecting who she was. Edwina Spitz swears Lottie’s staying with the nuns that live in the old house behind the Catholic church, although I find that hard to swallow. Lottie’s never been shy about talking about what she calls a papist conspiracy. You need to go into Farberville and fetch her, Arly.”

“On my list,” I said. I glanced at Jack, who was studying the menu, which, for the record, had not changed in the last few days or even in the last few decades. If Ruby Bee had been able to read my mind, I could expect lectures for a month on promiscuity and the necessity to keep him panting until the honeymoon. It was possible that Estelle was already looking for patterns for the bridesmaids’ dresses, while Ruby Bee fretted over recipes for the cake. Raspberry or lemon filling? Pink or yellow rosebuds?

“Just a cheeseburger,” said Jack, disrupting my fantasy.

I handed back the menu. “The same, and a glass of milk.”

Hammet ordered an ice cream sundae with extra chocolate sauce and two cherries, but Ruby Bee merely nodded and left without asking how I’d feel about Joyce’s niece as the flower girl.

In Manhattan, I could have pranced down the street in a string bikini and no one would have noticed. In Maggody, having lunch with an eligible man was tantamount to making a down payment on a cottage and subscribing to
Better Homes & Gardens.

And making an appointment with an obstetrician.

After we’d finished, I reminded Jack to keep an eye out for Andrew, then took Hammet with me to my car. He instructed me to drive up the road in front of the Pot O’ Gold, and finally turn down an overgrown trail that quickly disappeared into brush and scrub pines.

“It ain’t all that far,” he said as he got out of the car.

“Have you ever found it from this direction?”

Hammet shrugged as if he were a Sherpa guide who scaled Everest dozens of times and had never failed to arrive at the peak, even if it meant slinging his wealthy clients over his back for the final ascent. “It ain’t all that far,” he repeated. “I know ever’thing there is to know up here.”

An hour later we stumbled into a clearing of sorts. Corn stalks competed with weeds and saplings, and the rotted rails of a fence lay scattered in an oddly symmetrical arrangement. What remained of the house was, as Hammet had predicted, nothing more than a heap of gray, splintery timber, tarpaper, and broken glass.

“Told ya,” he said smugly.

“One more word out of you and you’ll be lucky if I send you a greeting card this summer,” I said. “I can feel ticks crawling all over my body, although I’m so sweaty that they may slide off. I thought you knew where this place was.”

“You’re looking at it, ain’t you?”

I was too tired to strangle him and dispose of the body, although there was most likely a well in near proximity. “Let’s find the family plot, and then get out of here.”

Hammet gulped. “Where they buried folks?”

“Only the dead ones.” We went around the rubble and found a patch of ground that had resisted an invasion of brush and brambles. A few daffodils competed with coarse grass and blackberry bushes. “This is it,” I said. “Look for headstones.”

It turned out that quite a few of Hospiss’s ancestors had met their demise over the course of the last two centuries. Almost all of them had merited at least a chunk of rock, although a few had not, leaving me to wonder how dastardly their sins had been.

“Look at this one,” called Hammet, scraping moss off a comparatively large marker. “It’s got some letters, though I can’t make ’em out.”

I knelt beside him. “It could be an H and a P.” I took a stick and scraped off some more moss. “And this could be 1893.”

“Iff’n you say so,” he said, unimpressed. “Could be a lotta things.”

He was right, and I wasn’t inclined to lug the rock back to the car and take it home to scrub it with a toothbrush. I stood up, then froze. “Did you hear something?”

Hammet looked at me. “You reckon this place is haunted?”

“No, it’s just that…” My throat tightened as I saw what appeared to be a Confederate soldier watching us from behind a thicket of pines. He was as thin as a fencepost, with a pale, cadaverous face and eyes lost in the shadow cast by the brim of his slouch hat. Sunlight glinted momentarily off buttons and gold braid. Before I could find the wherewithal to so much as blink, he vanished.

Hammet tugged my sleeve. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think it’s time to go back to town.”

Despite his whiny protests, I dumped him off at Ruby Bee’s and drove to Mrs. Jim Bob’s house to have a private conversation with Sweetpea about her activities the previous morning. I didn’t especially care if she and Andrew had cracked the plaster in his unit at the Flamingo Motel, but I was displeased that she’d lied to me. Then again, it was almost obligatory for potential suspects to lie over the most trivial issues. Traditional mystery fiction would never have thrived if the guilty party had raised his or her hand and admitted everything.

I was more concerned about the two bodies resting in the morgue at the Farberville hospital. Not lords in the conserva-tory or ladies in the parlor, but a decent if boring man and a pathetic old woman with only one small friend.

Mrs. Jim Bob was chopping onions in the kitchen. “What?” she snapped as I came in through the back door. “I would like to get this brisket in the oven, and I haven’t had a chance to look through my recipe box for a vegetable casserole. Jim Bob’s taken it upon himself to go into Farberville, which means I’ll have to send Perkin’s eldest down to the supermarket once I finish my list. One of these days, Arly Hanks, you’ll find out what it’s like to have to take on responsibilities. I’d gladly sit in your office all day, reading magazines and refusing to answer the telephone, but nothing would get done, would it?”

“I don’t guess any murders would get solved.”

She put down the knife. “So have you found out who pushed poor Wendell Streek off the bluff? He was a visitor in my home, as you well know. I feel as though I failed to provide proper hospitality. The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me that more of my guests have been brutally killed.”

I’d never quite seen her like this, and I was glad the knife was on the counter. I hoped Hizzoner was keeping his distance. “Although I was tempted to remain at the PD reading magazines and not answering the phone, I’ve been trying my best to find out what’s been going on. Are any of your guests here?”

“Most of them left to go to lunch. Did you think I buried their bodies in the garden?”

“That hadn’t occurred to me. If you don’t mind, I’ll go upstairs and examine Wendell’s files and notes.”

Mrs. Jim Bob picked up the knife and slashed at an onion, sending slices all over the counter and floor. “Do whatever you want.”

I eased around her and went upstairs. I could hear Perkin’s eldest singing in one of the bathrooms as she scrubbed the tub. Corinne, Simon, Sweetpea, and Andrew were lunching in Farberville. I had no theories concerning the whereabouts of Harriet or Kenneth, but surely they’d both had enough sense to fix a sandwich and discreetly dispatch themselves for the afternoon. I might have considered the next county to be a prudent distance.

Simon’s mess had spilled onto what had been Wendell’s half of the bedroom. I tossed some clothes on the floor, then sat down on the bed and went through the files I’d found the previous day. Most of the names were of the privates who’d dutifully ridden mules from Little Rock to Maggody, barely aware of what they’d consigned themselves to when they enlisted. Custiss, Emil, LaRue, Michael, Andrew, Joseph, Zachery, Gabriel, Thomas, and Crosby—all long dead and buried, either in their family’s churchyards or in unmarked graves. Boys who believed they could achieve manhood by killing their Northern counterparts. Boys who would never be men.

Henry Largesse’s file was missing, as was Hadley Parham’s. I was sure the files had been there when I was looking for Wendell’s address book. Also missing was his copy of the journal. In that it seemed as though there were more copies of the journal in Farberville than there were copies of the King James Bible, I wasn’t concerned. I certainly didn’t have time to flop on my sofa and study it for whatever clue had tipped off Wendell to the location of the gold. I’d never cared for jigsaw puzzles, riddles, or games of hide and seek.

The missing files were a different matter, however. I searched under the bed and in all the drawers, but they were most definitely gone. And whoever had taken them believed there was something of significance contained within them. I was pretty sure whatever it was would have sailed right past me, but now it seemed important to give them a more than cursory look.

I was sitting on the bed, berating myself for not taking them with me the previous day, when Harriet Hathaway opened the door.

“Arly?” she said timidly. “Do you mind having a few words with me? Mrs. Jim Bob mentioned that you’d come upstairs, and I thought I might find you here. Have you made any progress?”

“In Wendell’s case, no.” I threw some more of Simon’s clothes on the floor so that she could sit across from me. If he had half the sense of a gopher, he’d pick them up before Perkin’s eldest put them in a bag and dropped it off at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall for the next yard sale. “It seems as though a goodly number of people were on Cotter’s Ridge yesterday, including you. There were no witnesses when Wendell was pushed off the bluff. What’s more, almost anyone could have gone to Hospiss’s trailer and smashed her skull with a metal urn.”

“Hospiss?” Harriet said blankly. “Oh, yes, the woman who claimed to be a descendant of Hadley Parham. She could have been, but it pains me to think that the young lieutenant would have chosen to desert and remain here in Maggody.”