Roots of Murder (20 page)

“Many things happened. Mr. Dunning realized I was, what did he say? ‘Not dedicated to the job, verging on insubordinate.' I knew I couldn't stay. I couldn't do what he was telling me to do. I found another job, lost all my city benefits, and had to start back at year one for retirement, but I was a secretary over at Keesler, the air base in Biloxi. My mother worried about me driving over there every day, like she couldn't see her daughter behind the wheel of a car.”

“What happened? What could you not do?” Nell asked.

“For the entire year in 1962, no property, at least no valuable property, came up for tax sale. So the next year, money started disappearing. A lot of people paid in cash, didn't even have bank accounts. One day I came back from lunch to find Elbert Woodling arguing with Mr. Dunning, saying he had paid his taxes, how could he owe from last year? Mr. Dunning just showed him the books and kept saying ‘nothing is here, so you owe.' I stepped in and told Mr. Dunning that of course Elbert had paid; I remembered him coming in and paying. Mr. Dunning told me I probably remembered the year before. I kept arguing, but he slammed the ledger on the counter and said in his big loud voice that it wasn't written down and if he paid why hadn't I written it down? Like I took the money or something.

“Then Mr. Dunning told Elbert Woodling he owed last year's taxes, plus this year's, plus the penalty, and it was all due in thirty days. Two weeks later Elbert sold his property to the Pickings. A lot less than it was worth, but at least he got something out of it. I looked at that book when Mr. Dunning wasn't around and something had been erased and written over, not in my handwriting.”

“So they were changing the records?”

“Yes, although that first time I thought perhaps I had misremembered. After all, Mr. Dunning was strict, even mean about the rules, but he hadn't deliberately lied before. But then it happened again. The land over on the other side of the harbor. It had been owned for generations by the Defouche family; they called themselves Creoles and had come from New Orleans. They always paid their taxes on time. The first time, they repaid the taxes, bringing half their family with them, including a cousin from New Orleans who was a lawyer as witnesses. I guess they thought they made their point, but their land was on the water and it stretched back up the bluff, almost to Henry Street. The next time Mr. Dunning himself made sure to take the taxes and then he turned around four months later and told them they hadn't paid. The cousin from New Orleans wasn't licensed here, so he couldn't help. They came up with the money again, but I could tell it was a struggle. I started writing everything in ink. Thought maybe if they couldn't erase it, then they couldn't pretend it didn't happen.

“Mr. Dunning hired in a new girl to help, said it was too much for just me to do, and he put her up front as much as he could to take the payments.

“It took them two years, and rumor had it a few burning crosses, but they finally got the Defouches' land.”

“Who got it, do you know?” Nell asked.

“They broke it into six parcels: one each to Alderman Bobby Pearson, Alderman Jonas Becker, Sheriff Tremble, one to Mr. Dunning himself, one to something called Pelican Property, and the final one to Shelby Cruthers, a local developer. This happened shortly before I left. Mr. Cruthers let the others build nice expensive houses, to jack the property values up, then he built a big, ugly apartment building and charged rents for a waterfront place with rich neighbors. It spent a few years winding around in court until finally Hurricane Camille solved it by washing away everything except one of the houses. Then Mr. Cruthers was sued for not building to code, and for all I know that may still be winding through some court somewhere.”

“What year was Camille?”

“In August of 1969. I remember one of the airmen at the base telling me they clocked the winds at two hundred and ten miles an hour before the wind vane was blown off.”

“Not a good year to have beachfront property,” Nell commented.

“God has a sense of irony, I always thought.”

“Ms. March, you have a very good memory,” Nell said.

“I always have had. It's starting to slip now, but perhaps because I have so many years to remember. You're wondering how I can recall all these people, the events of so long ago.”

Nell ducked her head, her eyes on her notepad, hiding how clearly Penny March had read her thoughts. Is this a credible witness? Or someone spinning tales for attention?”

“I remember because it was important to remember,” Penny March said. “I knew at the time a great injustice was being done. I could do little to stop it except bear witness and hope that someday, someone would ask for these memories.” She put her hand on Nell's wrist.

Nell covered the old woman's hand with her own. “I want your memories. The past is never completely gone. Justice may be hard to find, even impossible, but this place won't escape its past.”

“Many have died. Mr. Dunning built half his fine house and then collapsed of a heart attack. Never lived a day in it. I guess his widow made some money off the property.”

“How could they get away with being so blatant?”

“Who was to stop them? The federal government wanted little to do with the ‘Negro problem' and the rest of those in power either were part of it, scared to get involved, or made it a point to be as blind as they could be.”

“Who else do you know that they deliberately changed the records on?”

“Mr. Dunning kept me in the back, me and my ink pens. There were a couple of other parcels that adjoined the Defouche land, owned by various cousins who had been given them somewhere along the way. I think there were about another three or four of those. I believe Mr. Cruthers got most of them. Then there was a good section of the bayou land that is now the Back Bay Marina. It was just some ramshackle fishing camp, but someone realized the bayou was deep enough, or could easily be made deep enough, to be navigable. Two old brothers owned it. They got drunk one night and their cabin burned down with them in it. Mr. Dunning ‘discovered' they hadn't paid their taxes. No one looked very hard for any heirs and the land was passed over.”

“Who got it, do you know?”

“It was that Pelican Property group. Someone ashamed enough not to want his name on the stolen property. They also took over the Jacobs farm up there. Now it's Back Bay Estates, Back Bay Country Club. That poor woman.”

Nell recognized the location, of course; that was where most of the money of Tchula County ended up, especially the old money. The Country Club was considered the most posh on the Gulf Coast, with membership criteria to make sure it stayed that way. The houses averaged about 1 to 2 acres each, and access was by a winding, secluded road. The developer had taken time and money, leaving many trees intact to heighten the sense of being in a wooded glade. The homes were diverse, from Tudor to modern, and the most expensive had access to the water.

“The brothers whose house burned. Was it possible it was arson?” Nell asked.

“And murder? No, or at least not direct murder. Gary Radnor was the volunteer fire chief at the time and he'd served with my brothers, so he came by regular to check on me and my mother. He told me those men—I don't remember their name, I'm sorry, someone should, but I don't—had built a fire, been cooking fish, and got too drunk to pay attention to the blaze. He did say he thought they had some help with the drinking. The brothers scraped by with fishing, some handy work. Not much more than a few nickels to rub together. Gary said they found about four bottles of bourbon there and not the kind those men could afford. He thought, and I agree, someone gave them the liquor, knew drunk men on the water had a good chance of being dead men.”

Returning to her other comment, Nell asked, “Why do you say ‘that poor woman'?”

“Hattie Jacobs. Her husband Daniel was killed in an accident and she was left to run their farm by herself, with four kids, the oldest at the time I believe around fourteen. I remember her coming in, carefully straightening out her folded bills and counting out what she owed. They were blatant and they were sloppy by the time they got to her. Thought no one or nothing could stop them. Mr. Dunning told her she hadn't paid her taxes. She just calmly said that can't be right and just as calmly pulled out a receipt that showed she had. It was in ink, in my handwriting. Mr. Dunning grabbed that receipt out of her hand and tore it up.

“I was so angry I snatched it off on the floor where he'd thrown it and said she had indeed paid her taxes, he wasn't going to make a liar out of me, not with that receipt in my writing. He got mad and started yelling, told me to go to the back, this wasn't my business. I handed Hattie Jacobs her torn receipt and he grabbed it again and thrust it in his pocket. Then looked at us and told us we were both wrong, with this awful smirk on his face, saying Miss Jacobs—like her husband never existed—hadn't paid her taxes and she needed to come up with them plus the penalty in thirty days or she'd lose her property.

“She managed it once, to repay those taxes, to unfold those crumpled bills. I'm guessing her kids didn't get new shoes that winter. But they wanted her land. They'd gotten the bayou property, but they needed the land to go with it. They talked some of the local groceries out of buying eggs from her. I remember her eldest son selling eggs out on the road in front of the farm. Some of us bought as many as we could, but we couldn't make up for what the stores stopped buying. She also had a stand of Christmas trees. End of October that year, someone chopped them down. After that, she sold the farm, got nothing for it, and moved to New Orleans. Never heard what happened to her. Hers was the last deed I recorded. Those dry pieces of paper held the story of such human misery.”

Penny March was silent, looking into the pine forest.

Nell glanced down at her notes, the scribbled names. Most of them would be dead by now, perhaps a few left. Even those would have gotten away with it, save for Penny March's memory. Nell knew there would be no justice, at best only a faint shade grasping them in the twilight of their life. But with the names Penny March had given her, the locations of the properties, she could coax the story from those dry pieces of paper. Not easily, she admitted, but without these guideposts, it would be an impossible maze of documents.

Nell felt angry, but she also felt eager and keyed up, the feeling she always had when she knew the story was there.

“It won't be justice,” she said, again taking the old woman's hand, “but it will be remembrance. You've given me enough to find those old records, prove what you're saying, trace the few living witnesses, add their stories to yours. Those men—their past will hunt them down. Living or dead, they won't escape.”

“‘Their graves were tainted, bitter with bone,'” Penny March quoted. “My brother sent that to me, the last letter I got from him. It could be a line from some great poet or something scribbled by the person next to him in the trench. He's buried in Hawaii. That was why I finally went there, not for the beaches but to see a poor infantryman's grave. Just a few memories. Some faded ink and a stone where my brother had once been.”

Memories, faded ink, and a gravestone, Nell repeated to herself. That could sum up what she had of Thom. Suddenly life seemed a long stretch; she would hold the memories just as Penny March held hers, years upon years.

“Although I do seem to recall a beach or two in that trip,” said a woman who joined them.

“Julia!” Penny March exclaimed. “I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost in the grocery store.”

“Hello, dear,” Julia said as she bent down and, amidst juggling a few grocery bags, gave Penny a solid hug. She then stood up and hoisted her bags like trophies. “It's just astonishing the lengths to which the liquor industry will go to entice people. Bad for the youth of the day, but lucky for us. Got you both hard lemonade and hard cider. Medusa only saw the lemonade and let it pass.”

“Nell, this is my good friend Julia Tyne. Julia, this is Nell McGraw from the
Pelican Bay Crier
.”

Nell shook hands. Julia was an older woman, although younger than Penny. Nell would have guessed they were sisters if Penny hadn't introduced her as a friend. It wasn't their looks, but an easy camaraderie and intimacy that was readily apparent.

“You must think I'm some kind of rum runner, smuggling in alcohol like this,” Julia said to Nell.

“But at
eighty-seven
, I'm old enough to drink, and enjoyment of life is more important than health. Although I firmly believe that an afternoon relaxer is more healthy than not,” Penny filled in.

“Don't worry, I'm just a reporter, not the vice squad. I never reveal my sources,” Nell said.

“Good to know one's friends,” Julia replied. To Penny, she added, “I have your weekend all sorted out. I'll come back by and pick you up this afternoon and don't have to bring you back until sometime Monday. Karl and Lenny are coming over tonight for pizza and poker. Then on Saturday we're doing a bar crawl, over in Biloxi.”

Penny broke in. “We're doing no such thing. More likely a sedate drive along the beach. Julia, dear, Nell has been interviewing me; you're going to make me sound like the most unstable of witnesses.”

“Interviewing you about what?”

“A long time ago. When I worked in Pelican Bay in the records department.”

“Ah. That has come to light.”

“Yes, finally,” Penny answered. “Poor Julia, she thought I would pass before her and she would be left to tell her secondhand version.”

“You're going to bring this all out?” Julia asked Nell.

“As best I can. I want to do more research before I print the story. Others will remember, if you have. I'm going to track down those who lost properties and add their voices. Plus dig in the old records and look at the deeds of sale.”