Redemption (27 page)

Romelo moved his head side to side. “Okay.”

Now let’s connect some dots.

“
Grandma tells you to get some blankets, put them in your backpack, go out with your sister into the cemetery to Julius Willis’s grave marker. You’re familiar with the grave because you’re related to him somehow. He might be your great-grandfather or great uncle. So far so good?”

Romelo didn’t speak.

So the baby was never in any danger.

“
Rommy and you wrap the baby up. One of you runs to tell Grandma. She calls the police. Later, you end up moving into Julius Willis’s old house, and you’re still with Grandma. Maybe she’s Julius Willis’s daughter.” Overton paused, and Romelo didn’t respond.
Cassandra Willis. So far so good.

“
Everything goes fine until you’re about ten or eleven when the house burns down.”

Romelo seemed to nod.

“
But ... but Grandma …” Overton stopped because he saw tears forming in Romelo’s eyes. “Grandma died in the fire.”

Romelo nodded, a tear sliding down his cheek.

Overton’s heart ached.
Can’t even wipe away his own tears.
“When Grandma died, you started running the streets because …”
It has to be this.
“Because the money went away. She used to get a nice payment every month or so for saving the baby and keeping quiet. She got a house, her daddy’s house. She’s gone, the money’s gone, no place to live. And you loved her, didn’t you? But you fell apart, ended up taking a bullet in the back over twenty dollars.”

“
Wasn’t over no twenty bucks,” Romelo said. “That’s what I told the police. Needed medicine for Rommy. She was hurtin’ bad. I could get what she needed if I lied about it. She was all I had. I got shot cuz I figured it all out.”

Overton squinted. “You mean you knew where the money came from, and you wanted more. Who’d you tell?”

“
My lawyer.”

Yeah. This is all coming together.
“Curtis Daniels, right?”

Romelo nodded.

Who
doesn’t
Curtis Daniels represent around here?
“Curtis Daniels got you the chair.”

“
Yeah.”

“
Do you know who shot you?”

Romelo frowned. “Fat, white, funky-smelling, freckled fuck who talked country.”

Overton stepped back.
That could be Ramsey.
“You know his name?”

“
Dude shoots you, he don’t give you his life story. Said he’d take care of everythin’, I walk away, pop pop. He says to me while I’m lyin’ on the sidewalk, ‘If you live, keep your mouth shut or your sister dies ... just like Grandma.’ I kept my damn mouth shut.”

My God! The shooter set the fire, too? Lester died in a fire ...
“Did Rommy get the medicine?”

Another tear. “No. Girl was in a whole lotta pain, and I couldn’t do shit. I even tried sellin’ this chair, but there ain’t a market for these, you know? They did pay for her funeral though, a nice one. Paid for Grandma’s, too.”

“
Where are they buried?”

Romelo smiled. “Over at Goens where it all began, right next to Great-Grandpa Julius. There’s a place for me there, too.”

And the world comes full-circle again.
“Don’t you be going there too soon, hear?”

“
I hear you.”

Overton scratched his head. “You have any family pictures?”

“
No. Fire got ‘em all.” His finger moved, and the chair wiggled back and forth. “Anything else you need me to say that I didn’t tell you?”

Overton smiled. “No. You’ve been very uncooperative. You didn’t tell me shit.”

Romelo laughed his breathy, hoarse laugh. “Yeah right. Later, Andy.” He raised a finger.

“
Later Romelo.”

They passed Romelo’s crew on the way back to the Bronco, and Overton wondered how many of them would end up in a chair like Romelo’s.
Hopefully none of them.

Overton got in, checked under the seat, and found his gun.

“
You gonna tell me everything now?” Jones asked as they pulled away.

“
Yep,” Overton said. “Direct me to Goens Memorial, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

38

Two phone calls. First Dude, then Romelo. That phone’s a two-edged sword sometimes.

He’s gonna put it all together, I tell them. He’s gettin’ way too close now. We need to stop him, need to put him out of action for a while.

Wait, they say. Wait till after the auction.

But, I keep sayin’. But this thing won’t work unless it’s all blamed on Jimmy Lee. But we’ve come too far to have him ruin it. But they ain’t listenin’ to my but’s. They keep sayin’ “Wait till after the auction.”

The auction ... I wish I could be there.

Maybe I’ll go anyway. I can be anyone I want to be, right?

39

“
Daniel
is Senator Sellers’s grandson? I don’t believe it!”

Overton and Jones walked the route Creed, Darcy, and Annie walked that cold March night through Mountainview, St. Simeon, and finally to Goens Memorial.

“
I had trouble digesting that, too,” Overton said. “I couldn’t believe Senator Sellers would go to such unbelievable lengths to protect himself and his son. All those pay-offs, and I bet there are more out there.” Overton hadn’t told Jones his suspicions about Daniel, and he didn’t plan to.

Jones rested under one of the few trees in the cemetery. “A senator’s son kills his half-brother who’s half black and makes it look like a lynching. His father gets the grandson out of Dodge before anyone can connect the mother to the murder. Then the good father pays folks to keep quiet. Now these folks are gettin’ killed off, gettin’ quiet permanently, fifteen years later, and the son’s doin’ the deed.”

You don’t know how right you are, but with the wrong son, though.
“Blood’s definitely thicker than water, huh?”

“
You’re gonna confront Jimmy Lee Junior with all this, right?”

“
I am.”

“
Wish I could be there.”

Overton dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “We almost there?”

Jones pushed off the tree and squatted. “They’re right out here in front of us. This tree wasn’t here back then.”

Overton looked down and read the markers. “Rommy Dudley. Doctor Julius Willis. Cassandra “Cassie” Poindexter.”

Goosebumps crept up Overton’s arms, he shivered, and his hands grew cold.
Cassie ... Callie?

“
You all right?”

No. I may never be all right again. Poindexter is a pretty common name around these parts, and this “Cassie” could be from an entirely different clan, but there are just too many coincidences here!
“Yeah, I’m okay. Guess I’m dehydrated. Where’s the nearest watering hole?”

“
You mean a bar?”

Callie? Callie’s doing all this?
“Uh, no. A convenience store will do.”
Though several shots of Jack Daniels will make all this easier to swallow.

Overton sipped his lemonade, Jones his Pepsi. “What’s on your mind?”

Much.
“I need some old pictures of the Willis family.”
I have to be sure.
“Think the
Times
will have some?”

“
Doubt it. The
Courier
might have some. That’s Calhoun’s black newspaper.”

“
Take me there.”

The
Calhoun Courier
was housed in the bottom floor of a brick building near Webster High School. They were greeted by a light-skinned, freckled woman wearing a bright yellow sun dress, her graying hair tied back.

“
Howdy, I’m Miles Overton, and this is Jimmy Jones.”

“
Dena Denton.”

“
We’re here to see if you have any photographs of Doctor Julius Willis and his family from the fifties and sixties.”

Dena sat behind a desk. “What for?”

I can’t say “for an investigation.” Lie? She has such penetrating eyes and will see right through me.
Overton sighed. “I’m trying to solve the murder of Jeremiah Poindexter, a boy lynched in Pine County in eighty-three.”

“
What’s that got to do with Doc Willis?” Dena asked.

“
Hopefully nothing. But I might be able to find out who burned his house down and get a murder charge against the arsonist. Cassandra Poindexter died in that fire.”

“
I remember.” She tapped a pencil. “And who’s Cassandra Poindexter to you?”

Overton closed his eyes. “She would have been my future mother-in-law.” He opened his eyes. “I’m planning on marrying her daughter, Callie, this fall.”

The pencil fell to the desk. “You ain’t funnin’ me, are you?”

And you’re not contradicting me, so it must be true. Callie
is
Cassandra’s daughter.
“No ma’am. I’m not. You see, Callie was Jeremiah’s mama, and, well, I’ve always felt the need to—”

She waved a hand. “No need to explain.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a key ring filled with keys. “Archives are upstairs.”

They followed her up three flights of stairs, the heat increasing with each step, and entered a stifling, musty room full of file cabinets.

“
The files are arranged by years,” she said pointing at a row along the far wall. “You’ll find the papers from the fifties over there.”

“
Are births listed?” Overton asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. “The
Courier
is still the only paper in town to celebrate every black baby. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” She closed the door behind her.

“
Where do we start?” Jones asked.

Overton loosened a few buttons on his shirt. “I’ll start with fifty-one. You start from sixty-nine, and we’ll meet around nineteen sixty. Pull any picture of anyone or anything connected to Doc Willis.”

He opened the file marked “1951” and started pulling papers, each yellowed and brittle with age.
And I thought the reason she never told me her birthday was vanity. She didn’t want me to know who her mama was.
Luckily, the
Courier
was a weekly, so in less than half an hour, Overton had reached July.

And had stopped breathing.

There in front of him was Callie’s birth announcement:

Callie rescued her grandchild, maybe found out from the Senator somehow, set it all up, watched her grandson grow up, waited until he was old enough, man enough, to avenge his father’s death.. “I always keep my promises to the ones I love. Always.”

Am I about to become engaged to a murderer.

“
Bingo!” Jones yelled. He brought a paper to Overton. “Family reunion photo from sixty-eight.”

Overton took the paper, willing his hands to remain steady. At least fifty people stared back at him from the porch, steps, and lawn of a beautiful brick house. He read the list of names in the caption—and found Callie. He found her
and
J in the picture, she a heart-stopping seventeen-year-old with the same squint and smile, he with serious eyes and a laughing mouth.

I know why you did it, Callie, but why’d you do it this way and on my watch?

He then scanned the rest of the names and froze. “Autumn Harper,” he said aloud, and he located a white girl in the picture in the arms of a light-skinned woman.