Roots of Murder (40 page)

twenty-three

The alarm clock was
jarring; Nell had had little sleep, barely an hour. She was more jarred at hearing Jacko's voice in the hall; then she remembered last night. When she had gotten back, no one was up. It had seemed so improbable that the house could be quiet and serene, as if nothing had happened.

She hastily got out of bed and threw on a robe, not wanting Jacko to share too many worrisome details about last night's adventure. Plus she had to come up with how to add her own story to his account of the burning of Marcus's house.

When she rounded the corner on them, Jacko and Josh were talking about sharks.

“Good morning,” Nell said, trying to cover her worry. “I see you've noticed our overnight guest.” She gave Jacko a towel and a spare toothbrush and told him if he hurried he could get in and out before Lizzie noticed anyone else was in front of her to use the bathroom.

Nell quickly took her own shower, needing to do a more thorough job of getting the night's sweat, blood, and worry off. After she got out, she called the hospital where Marcus had been taken. They could tell her little except he was being transferred to Biloxi Regional and should be there shortly.

Nell tried to remember if Dolan had had Marcus fill out the usual forms, including who to contact in case of an emergency. She wondered if his friends at Joe's Corner, with the fire and him missing, had already contacted someone.

Lizzie didn't learn that Jacko was in the house until she started down the stairs in her ratty old bathrobe. Seeing him, she hurried back to her room to get dressed, something that helped them get out the door in good time. Then they had the car dilemma; Nell's back seat was jammed with boxes. Jacko solved things by rearranging the boxes to free up the front seat of his car. Lizzie was happy to ride to school with a cute older guy. Josh got Nell's front seat.

After dropping her kids off, they both pulled into the alley behind the Crier. Nell's arms were already tired at the thought of moving all those boxes again. However, Jacko did most of it, delegating to Nell the problem of where to put everything. It was more work, but the only sensible place was the upstairs conference room. It was little used. Dolan had spread out his paperwork to dry, but there was plenty of room to stack the boxes.

Dolan, Ina Claire, and Pam arrived in time to see the final box head up the stairs.

After legally reparking their cars, Nell and Jacko each explained what had happened.

“You let me sleep through it?” was Jacko's comment on her early morning adventure.

“Marcus? They did that to Marcus?” Pam shouted in outrage. “They burned his house down and then they assaulted him?”

“How is he doing?” Ina Claire asked. It was the worry they all had.

“He's being transferred from the small hospital up there to Biloxi Regional. That's all I know right now. I'm going to call and see if I can get an update.” She didn't add her fears about the silence she had watched come over him as they lay in the wet grass.

And she still had a paper to run. “Meanwhile, Dolan, can you clear a space upstairs for Jacko to sort through that stuff? Let's find out what those men so badly wanted to burn.”

It was early, but Nell called Joe's Corner while Dolan was looking for the sheet with Marcus's info. Everything had been moved out of his office, so he couldn't be sure whether it had been ruined in the fire or was at his house drying in his rec room.

“Yeah, Joe here,” a tired voice answered.

“Hi, this is Nell McGraw. I'm calling about Marcus Fletcher.”

“You heard about his house? Poor bastard, what a thing to do to an old man.”

Nell had to tell Joe they had done more harm to an old man. “I'd like to contact his family, tell them what happened.”

“I served with his son in the Marines. One of the last people to see him alive. Marcus and his wife took me in like a son, helped me get my life back together. ‘Lost one son and gained one,' he told me. I'm part family. I was about to call his kids.”

Nell was relieved to pass the duty on to him. Her head felt tired and thick and she didn't feel she could find the words.

After that she called the sheriff's department, but other than acknowledging the report from the highway patrol, they had nothing to add. She called the police station, not that she had much hope they would do anything. They took down the info and promised a vague “will be on the lookout for suspicious characters.” Nell could only hope they were competent enough to notice two men wearing ski masks driving around at night without lights on.

She was tired, angry, and frustrated. Two men had tried to kill Marcus and destroy the information he had. Their actions had been quick and sure, not those of men old enough to have committed the murders. The next generation of hate? Her frustration was little helped by the noise of the workmen in the main room. They were ripping up the carpet, replacing windows, and doing any repair that required making significant noise.

She finally got up and shut her door. She left a note telling people to come in, as she usually only shut the door when she needed to work on something or to talk to someone in private. Just as she sat back at her desk, the phone rang.

“
Pelican Bay Crier
, Nell McGraw,” she answered.

For a moment, there was just silence. Then a voice whispered, “I didn't do it. They're going to tell you I did, but I didn't.”

It took Nell a moment to recognize the harsh undertone as Whiz Brown. “Did what, Chief Brown?”

“My daddy didn't have nothing to do with it neither. Yeah, he knew, but knowing is not the same as doing.”

Nell heard the fear in the man's voice. “I can help you, but you have to tell me what's going on.”

“Don't let them say we did it. They gave me five hundred dollars to call out my men on Friday night, to say some kids were messing around on the beach, but that's all I did, I swear. Didn't know what was going to happen. My daddy just took the pictures, but he never pulled the trigger. You leave me out of this. Anyone asks, this call never happened.”

“I believe you,” Nell said to reassure him, although she didn't know what to believe. “What pictures are you talking about?”

“You leave me out, got that? Frieda Connor. Somewhere in her attic.” With that, he hung up abruptly.

There was a brief knock on her door and Jacko entered. He had dust on his nose and several sheets of old paper in his hand. And an excited look on his face. He handed her the first sheet. In faded handwriting it was titled
“Loan Sharks”
with a subheading
“don't take money or help from these men, costs too much.”
Nell skimmed down the list, recognizing no names until she got to the second to last. H.H. Pickings. She guessed it referred to the father of the mayor, given the age of the document. The next sheet, in the same handwriting, was titled
“Loose Men”
with a subtitle that said
“keep your wives and daughters away from these bastards.”
Bryant Brown was on this list, as was Bo Tremble with a notation beside his name—
“two children”
—which Nell guessed to mean that he had fathered two children out of wedlock, probably by rape. The last list was
“Klan Members”
in a different handwriting. As before, most of the names were unfamiliar to her. Reese Allen, Wayne Calvin, George Bessmer, Delbert Barnett, Frederick Connor—she paused at that one—Bryant Brown, Norbert Jones; two she did recognize. The Jones boys had a heritage of hate. But they'd gained nothing in the land swindles, and Norbert Jones was long dead and beyond any prosecution. Much as she wanted it to be them, a nice tidy package of criminals, it didn't make sense that the Jones brothers would go after Marcus. There were about twenty names in all, with one scratched out and a notation next to it reading,
“died in a car accident, the fool.”

Nell looked up at Jacko. “Good work. There may or may not be a story here—there is a story here,” she amended, “but I don't think we can label people as members of the KKK on the basis of one sheet of paper.”

“No,” Jacko said quickly, “but we can research the names, see where that takes us. Some of these might have ended up in jail or someplace else that's public record. I'll keep digging and see what I can find.”

He left the lists on Nell's desk. Whiz Brown had mentioned Frieda Connor and now she had a list alleging someone named Frederick Connor was a member of the Klan. Nell grabbed her phone book and looked for a listing for Connor. After a round of calling, she found an R. Connor over on Lancelot Lane, one of the tacky subdivisions on the east side of town. Maybe Frederick went by Rick. She dialed the number. After about seven rings, the phone was answered by a woman.

“Can I speak to Frieda Connor?” Nell asked.

“Who's calling?” The voice sounded suspicious and guarded.

“My name is Nell McGraw and I'm with the
Pelican Bay Crier
.”

“You're the paper lady,” the voice said. “Bet you're calling about my stepdad and his Klan stuff.”

Nell was nonplussed it had come out so easily. “I'm looking into that allegation.”

“My mom passed away about two weeks ago,” the woman said. “I'm over here goin' through her stuff, pitching most of it.”

“Where is your stepfather?” Nell asked.

“I don't keep up with that bastard. He could of died for all I know. Last I heard was the nursing home out past the trailer park on 90.”

“I've heard a rumor your mother had some pictures from that era.”

“She might of. Lot of boxes. You're welcome to go through any you want to.”

“When would it be convenient for me to come over?” Nell asked.

“I'm here now. Got a lot of stuff out on the street already for garbage
pick-up
tomorrow.”

“I'll be there in about half an hour,” Nell decided.

This could be an exercise in frustration, Nell realized as she got up. Even if Whiz, in his desperation, had told the truth, there was no guarantee she would find anything. Even if she did, no promise it would tell them anything more than they already knew. She asked Jacko if he could pick up Lizzie and Josh in around an hour.

Nell told Pam and Ina Claire where she was going and headed out the door.

When she got to Lancelot Lane, the house was easy to spot; the one with piles of old boxes out front.

Nell found a woman about her age in the kitchen, and she introduced herself.

“I'm Angie Pitts.” The woman hastily brushed a hand off on her pants and shook with Nell. “Most of the stuff from the attic's already on the curb. Been sitting up there for decades and if we didn't use it in that time, no reason to think we might ever.”

“Ms. Pitts,” Nell said, “are you sure you're comfortable with what I might find? Things that, well, make your family look bad?”

“Just don't bring my name into it, that's all I ask.” With a harsh laugh, she added, “You can't make them look worse than they were.” She pulled up a sleeve and showed Nell a series of scars on her inner elbow. “See this here? Stepdaddy thought he'd teach me a lesson 'bout cleaning my room. Used his cigarette to do it. I got other scars, too.” She savagely threw a plate into the trash pile, shattering it. “Momma shouldn't of married him, but she did. Stuck by him till a while back when he shoved her head into the toilet and us kids got together and kidnapped her. Put her in this house. Thought we got her safe, but he came crawling back and next thing he was living here. He stroked out a couple of years ago and we finally got some peace in the family.”

“I'm very sorry, Ms. Pitts,” Nell said. “That was a horrible way to grow up.”

“Call me Angie. Not fancy enough for the ‘Ms.' stuff. You drag that bastard through whatever mud you feel like.”

“If I find anything, I'll let you know before I decide what to do with it,” Nell told her.

“Don't need to ask. Like I say, just don't mention my name. I don't know if I want to know what other crap he did. Bastard.” She shattered another plate. As if answering a question Nell had asked, she said, “Yeah, should be saving these plates, at least give 'em to the thrift shop, but I was forced to eat everything off these plates. Didn't eat the spinach quick enough for him, he'd do things like shave soap onto the plate and force us to eat that. Teach us we could be eating stuff that really tasted bad, he told us. Once made my brother eat cockroaches.” Another plate shattered. “You know he messed with us girls. Never had no kids 'cause of him.”

“That's evil,” Nell said. “No one should treat children that way.”

“You got it. Now you know why I don't give a damn what you write about him.”

Nell could think of little to say to the woman's volcanic anger. There were no words that, in a brief encounter in a tired kitchen, could matter a damn against the years of damage. Nell excused herself and headed to the curb to start looking.

She wasn't dressed for sitting on a lawn and digging through dusty old boxes, but there wasn't time to go home.

Most of the boxes had little of interest: old clothes, bank statements from the fifties, old magazines. There were several boxes of Confederate memorabilia, and others that held stacks of blatantly racist material, proof of his Klan membership. Nell was getting discouraged. She was through about
two-thirds
of them and had found nothing of real interest. She opened the next box and found stacks of letters. She started to pass on that box until she noticed the letters in one of the stacks were addressed to a woman named Alma Smyth. One of the names from Pelican Property was A.J. Smyth. Nell took that stack out and searched through the others, but found nothing else. A glance at her watch told her she would have to hurry to get a brief glimpse of the rest of the stuff. She opened another box, deciding Jacko wouldn't leave the Crier building anytime soon, and Josh and Lizzie could hang out there until she got done.