Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 01 - Hurricane Season (11 page)

When Woody responded, his tone was exaggeratedly polite. “Mother Trulock, if you see that young man again, you tell him I want to talk to him right away, you hear?” He glanced at Cecil with the suggestion of a smile, then back at her. “Now, you said there was another thing?”

“Pearl Washington, Snapper’s maid, gave me some poems Diana wrote. They show that Diana was carrying on with somebody. A married man.”

The smile became deeper. “Do tell.”

“I know she saw a lot of married men,” continued Lily, her face getting hotter. “But according to the poems, this was a different type of thing.”

Woody inclined his head. “I appreciate you bringing all this to my attention. Of course, now that we got Wesley Stafford apprehended, we’re going to be spending most of our time looking at the evidence against him. But if we get a chance—you paying attention, Cecil?—we’ll be looking into all this you’ve mentioned.”

“You haven’t even read the poems,” said Lily.

“Naw ma’am, and you know what? Why don’t you hang on to them for right now. Keep them real handy, in case I need them. Will you do that for me?”

Lily rose. “So nice of you to take the time.” She hoped her voice conveyed adequate sarcasm.

“Glad to do it.” He got up from behind his desk and ushered her toward the door.

“How are you so sure Wesley did it?” asked Lily.

“Gus Avery keeps the bait shack down there. He saw Wesley running away from the dock. And besides that, Wesley confessed.” From the doorway Woody indicated the man with the goiter who, alone now, was still on the bench eating peanuts.

“Did she drown?”

“Naw. Best we can figure, he tied her up and whomped her with the end of that net that had the weights in it until she died. Then he wrapped her in the net and dumped her in the drink thinking she was going to sink to the bottom. Only he didn’t wait to make sure, and the net caught, and there she was.”

Lily shuddered. Another thought occurred to her. She wasn’t sure how to phrase it delicately. “Was she—had she been—you know—raped or anything?”

A flush touched the lobes of Woody’s ears. “No. Not anything.” He took her firmly by the elbow. “Thank you for coming by, Mother Trulock, and for all this good information.”

Lily tried to match false heartiness with sarcasm. “And thank you, Woody, for your interest.” She turned and marched out of the office.

Lily was on the courthouse lawn before she allowed her anger to surface totally. Woody thought he was so smart. She remembered how, when he was courting Wanda, he would sit outside in his car and honk the horn, summoning her to come out. Lily had begged Wanda not to marry him, but Wanda couldn’t see anything but to get married to the first man who came along. Wanda had probably told Woody all the bad things Lily had said about him, and he had been looking all these years for a chance to get her goat.

She’d meant to go straight back to the store. Instead, she walked across the street to Maude’s Coffee Cup. She would have a glass of tea while she thought things over.

Josh didn’t have to manufacture an excuse to get back to the mainland. Early in the morning, Larry discovered weevils in a five-pound bag of grits. Then a possum was found drowned in a barrel of mash. Josh watched Amos fish it out with a rake and fling the limp brown body into the bushes for Larry to bury since, according to him, possum was not fit to be cooked for white people. After a few minutes, Josh realized that Amos was making no move to pour out the mash.

“You still going to use that?” he asked, indicating the barrel.

“Why not?”

“That possum—”

“He didn’t touch hardly any of it. It’s all right.”

Josh gulped a mouthful of coffee, burning his lips on the tin cup.

Murphy, who had been watching, walked over to Josh. “We need some chicken wire for the top of those barrels.”

“And some grits,” put in Larry.

“Grits and all,” said Murphy. “Might as well get it all if you’re going to have to go.”

Rummaging hurriedly through the supplies, Josh made a list. Murphy pulled ten dollars out of his pocket. “You can probably get it all at the store by the ferry landing, not have to go all the way into town.”

Josh had no intention of going back to the store—Trulock’s Grocery, was it?—where he had made the phone call. “I don’t reckon they’ve got chicken wire, do you?”

“Maybe not. Better go to town.” Murphy turned away. “Don’t waste any time. We got work to do here.” Josh ran for his boat.

The St. Elmo municipal pier, at the edge of the city park, was a barnacle-encrusted structure that swayed over the bay on rickety pilings. In its shadow a more modern concrete dock jutted into the water, small boats moored along it at intervals. Josh tied up and started through the park toward downtown St. Elmo, passing the bandstand where the candidates had sat during the fish fry. Its crepe-paper streamers stirred in the slightly moving air.

Downtown St. Elmo was awakening. Shades were rolled up in the dime store’s flyblown window, revealing a back-to-school display of pencils and curling notebook paper. In the drugstore, all the stools at the counter were occupied by men hunched over cups of coffee. Josh saw a sign saying
Esther’s Market
and went in to buy grits.

It took longer than he expected. He had trouble finding things. The cash register at the only checkout stand stopped working, causing much speculation about what the matter was before it spontaneously repaired itself. Next door, the hardware store was possibly out of chicken wire, the clerk speculated, since Miz Johnson had replaced her whole chicken yard last week, but maybe some could be located “out back.” Eventually it was. With the rolled-up wire under one arm and his bag of groceries cradled in the other, Josh emerged onto the now baking pavement.

He looked up at the courthouse clock. It was late enough. A telephone booth stood on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. He entered it, put his purchases at his feet, and dug into his pants pocket for a nickel. This time, he had one.

When the operator came on the line, he said, “Collect to Tallahassee,” and gave the number and his name.

It took a few clicks before a female voice on the other end of the slightly blurry line answered, “Beverage Department,” accepted the call, and said, “You all right, Josh?”

Josh allowed himself half a second to wish that he was standing in the office with her, looking out the window over the trees at the dome of the state capitol. “I need to speak to Eddie, Louise.”

The phone booth was stifling. Josh mopped sweat from his forehead. A hearty voice came on the line and said, “What say, Joshua?”

“I got some problems. You know about the girl that got killed down here?”

“Congressman Landis’s daughter. Yeah, it’s in the papers. I heard on the radio they arrested some preacher boy.”

“I didn’t know that. But listen.” Josh told Eddie about finding Diana Landis’s body and making the call to the sheriff. “She was killed on the same boat that Murphy met that morning,” he concluded. “This whole thing is connected up somehow. We got a mess on our hands.”

He listened to waves of static for a while until a graver-sounding Eddie said, “Nobody knows who you are, do they, Josh? That part’s all right?”

“So far so good.”

“I got to check with the people upstairs. If a congressman’s daughter was involved in some kind of moonshine deal and got herself killed, they may want to handle this a different way. But, for right now, your job’s the same. Find out who’s behind it. Is it as big an operation as we thought?”

“Big. Fancy. Kerosene blowers, so you don’t see any smoke. Deep well, fancy pump. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were distributing all the way to Atlanta. There’s a lot of money’s worth of hooch going out of there, I can tell you that.”

“Plumb put the Calhouns out of business for us.”

“They’ll set up again. But this bunch is giving them some competition.”

“Shoot. With the taxes up so nobody can afford legal liquor, every moonshiner in the country is going to be driving a Cadillac by this time next year. If we don’t do something about it, that is. Eh, Josh?”

Josh rubbed his hand across his face. “That’s what I’m trying to accomplish down here.”

“I know. This is turning out to be a bad one. Keep after it. Call me back as soon as you can. I’ll try to get to the people upstairs today.”

“It isn’t so easy to call. I’m stuck over on that island.”

“Do the best you can, old buddy.”

When Josh hung up, the inner tension that had eased while he talked with Eddie returned. His work as a revenue agent had made him accustomed to being alone and, in many quarters, despised. It was his practice to go on doggedly with the job and not think about it. But seeing the dead girl yesterday had done something to him. The thought of going back to the island, of living with people he was determined ultimately to betray, made him intensely lonely. He opened the phone booth, picked up his burdens, and started slowly back toward the park, the pier, and his boat.

He was so preoccupied that he didn’t glance across the street at Maude’s Coffee Cup. He didn’t see the woman sitting next to the window get up from a table so rapidly she upset her glass of tea.

By the time Lily had apologized and paid for her spilled tea, the dark-haired young man had almost reached the corner. Moving at a half-trot, trying to look innocent—as if she’d just remembered leaving the iron on at home—she closed the distance between them.

She couldn’t see his face, had seen it only in the instant he came out of the phone booth, but she was positive it was the same man who’d made the call from her store. The set of his shoulders, the curly dark hair, even the dirty khaki pants were the same.

She didn’t stop to wonder what she was doing. The sight of him, after he’d been so much on her mind, made following him a necessity. Woody might not care if this man had made the anonymous call about Diana’s murder, but she herself, she realized now, was convinced he had. And whether or not Woody cared, she did.

The man turned toward the city park and municipal pier as Lily, now fairly close to him, followed. The narrow street was one of the oldest and least desirable residential areas in St. Elmo. Many of the houses were close to tumbling down, their porch screens rusty and bowed, paint peeling from weathered boards, yards full of sandspurs and dollar weeds.

From a block away, Lily saw with consternation that Ludie Mims was sitting on her front porch. Josh was approaching her house now.

Ludie, who had passed ninety last year, spent her days in her porch swing, her feet barely touching the ground, watching with bright black eyes whoever happened along. Often, she hailed a passerby and asked for help reading a letter, claiming to have lost her spectacles. This had been going on for quite some time, and everyone in St. Elmo knew the letter was a circular left in Ludie’s door several years ago by the gas company. She always carried the circular in her apron pocket, and she always asked anyone who consented to read it whether it was from Charles.

Charles, Ludie’s husband, had been dead for twenty years. Still, the reader, having been through the ritual before, usually thought it mannerly to say yes, it was from Charles, that Charles was doing fine and sent his love. On hearing this, Ludie would return the letter to her apron pocket, and the passerby would be free to continue.

Lily saw Ludie’s head snap around when Josh walked by, and knew he was about to be caught. A rusting truck was up on blocks in the front yard next door to Ludie’s. She stepped behind it. By craning her neck she could see what was happening.

“Hoo! Young man!” Ludie called.

Josh’s pace slowed and he glanced Ludie’s way briefly. The glance, Lily knew, was his mistake. Ludie jumped to her feet, flapped her apron at him and screeched, “Young man!”

Lily felt a flicker of approval at seeing Josh stop and realizing he was polite enough not to ignore Ludie. “Ma’am?” he said, sounding wary.

Ludie hobbled to the edge of the porch. As shrunken and stooped as she was, her voice was strong. “I need me some help.”

Josh walked toward the house. “Help with what?”

“This here letter.” Ludie removed it from her pocket and waved it at him. “I need to read it, and I can’t find my spectacles.”

Lily saw Josh hesitate, then lift his shoulders in evident resignation, set his groceries and chicken wire on the front walk, and take the letter. He unfolded it and stood reading while Ludie watched. “Is it from Charles?” she asked.

He glanced at Ludie, then back at the letter. “Well, no’m,” he said finally. “It’s from the West Florida Gas Company, wanting to know if you could use—”

“But is it from
Charles?
” Ludie leaned forward.

“—a new dryer. A gas dryer.”

Josh and Ludie regarded one another.

Lily saw Ludie straighten as much as she could with her back the way it was. “What does Charles say?” she asked.

Josh glanced back at the paper, then at Ludie again. He refolded the paper and handed it to her. “He says he’s just fine. Sends his regards.”

Ludie returned the paper to her pocket. Before Josh could turn away she said, “What’s your name, young man?”

“Josh.”

“Where do you stay at?”

Lily moved closer as Josh said, “Just visiting.”

“But where do you stay at?” Ludie’s voice got louder as Josh backed away.

“Not around here.”

“The island?”

“Well—”

“You got to watch out on that island.” Ludie started down her front steps. “There’s chiggers as big as horseflies. Charles went over there hunting once, they like to eat him up. Had to bathe him and the dog in turpentine when they got home.”

“Yes’m.” Josh scooped up his bundles.

“You got your boat down to the pier, I reckon. Won’t take more than half an hour to get over there. That about right?”

“I never said—”

“Where you staying at over there? The Elmo House? Best creamed corn I ever did eat, when Charles and I went over there on a Sunday. The lady that runs it, Miss Rose, she still there?”

“I don’t—”

Lily thought of the Elmo House as it was now, boarded up for years, sand sifting through cracks in the windows and crabs scuttling across the front porch.