The Girl from Felony Bay (12 page)

“Now, I wouldn't swear to this in court, but if I'm remembering correctly, your dad found out that your family had never charged the Middletons rent, but your uncle Charlie started to when your grandfather went into the hospital. Mrs. Middleton couldn't afford what he was charging, and since she probably figured she didn't actually own the land, she moved out.”

I glanced at Bee, because she was the one who'd asked why Mrs. Middleton left her old cabin and moved into a trailer. “Typical Uncle Charlie,” I said. “When did Daddy find out about it?”

Custis shook his head. “Not till years later, and that's when he decided to break Mrs. Middleton's old land into a separate parcel. If I had to guess, I'd think he was planning to give the land to Mrs. Middleton, because he thought it was rightfully hers.”

“And that was just before his . . . accident.”

Custis nodded. “Pretty close.”

I was already starting to see red. I wanted to go back to Reward and kick Uncle Charlie in the knee or maybe even a little higher.

“But that never happened?” I asked.

“No,” Custis said. I could tell by the way he closed his lips and squeezed them together that he had more to say.

“Why not?” I asked. “If Daddy thought that Mrs. Middleton should have gotten that land, then it shouldn't have been sold to anybody else, right?”

“Well,” he said with a shrug. “Not in a perfect world, but things happened.”

I could tell he didn't want to say any more. “You can say it,” I told him. “Bee knows about everything that happened.”

Custis looked at Bee, but when he turned his eyes back to me, I could tell that he was still struggling with how much he could say. “The firm had to repay Miss Jenkins for all her lost gold and jewels.”

“But Daddy didn't steal them.”

“I agree with you, but since your dad was the legal guardian of Miss Jenkins's wealth, and some of the jewels and gold were found in his possession, he and the rest of this law firm were legally responsible for the loss. Because your dad hasn't been able to help us figure out who did commit the theft, Mr. Barrett felt he had no choice but to raise the largest possible amount of money from the sale of Reward. I'm certain he felt as badly about it as I did.”

“In other words, the land that my father wanted to be given to Mrs. Middleton because he believed it was hers got sold to somebody else?”

Custis shrugged. “Mr. Barrett is the managing partner now, and he handled everything. I'm not familiar with the details, but yes, from what you're saying it sounds like that's what happened. I'm sorry. But you need to understand that it was all done in the hopes of preserving as much of your father's name and standing as possible.”

I sat back and thought about this. I guessed maybe it was true that Daddy would have been in even more trouble without the entire plantation being sold, and I also knew it wouldn't have been fair for the other lawyers in the firm to have to pay for a crime they didn't commit. I didn't know what Bee and I could possibly do to make things better, but it just felt so wrong, I couldn't stand it. I tried to calm down and think about the problem the way Daddy would have. I knew the first thing he would have done would be to get as many facts about what had actually taken place as possible.

“Could we find out who bought the Felony Bay property?” I asked.

“Unfortunately I can't disclose anything about business matters we handled for one of our clients,” Custis said.

My face fell. “Then how can we ever find out?”

“You didn't let me finish,” Custis went on. “Fortunately for you, it's a matter of public record.”

“Who do we have to ask?”

He stood and held up a finger. “Just sit tight. I think you should be able to get it off the computer.”

He grabbed a pad and pen from his desk and walked out into the hallway.

Martha brought our Cokes while we waited, and then after another minute Custis was back. “I just had to get the parcel number for Felony Bay,” he said as he walked around his desk and typed a few words. He waved us over. On the screen I could see a page called County Tax Records.

“Like I said, it's public information.”

He hit the Enter key, and a second later the property description appeared: twenty riverfront acres on Leadenwah Island. It showed the appraised value and the annual taxes. The owner's name was something called Felony Bay Land Company, LLC.

“What's Felony Bay Land Company?” I asked.

“Probably an investment partnership,” Custis said. “Real-estate developers often use names like that.”

“That sounds about right to me.” I told him how Bee and I had seen Bubba Simmons using one of those excavating machines on the beach and about all the holes he had dug.

Custis considered this for a moment. “Sounds like it could be a developer testing to see if he could put some septic systems in, but from what you're describing, those holes are way too close to the water to be the foundations for houses or anything like that.”

“Why else would they be digging those holes?”

Curtis smiled. “Did your dad ever tell you the old stories about Felony Bay?”

“You mean like how pirates and blockade-runners used to hide out there?”

He nodded. “There's one particular story about the
Lovely Clarisse
.”

I thought for a moment and shook my head. “I don't think Daddy ever told me that one.”

Bee and I sat down again as Custis leaned forward in his chair, like he was telling us a secret. “The legends say that during the Civil War, a blockade-runner named the
Lovely Clarisse
tried to sneak out of Charleston Harbor loaded with a cargo of gold and cotton. The Union navy, which was blockading Charleston Harbor to keep supplies from going in or out, spotted the ship as it sailed out under cover of darkness. In the pursuit and ensuing battle, the
Lovely Clarisse
was badly damaged, and her captain steered her into the shallow coastal waters south of Charleston—eventually, folks say, into the Leadenwah River and right into Felony Bay. Having survived the battle but needing more extensive repairs than could be managed in the small bay, the captain decided to offload his heavy gold to make the ship as light and fast as possible. He and his officers supposedly buried the gold somewhere along Felony Bay and then set out once again to sneak past the Union navy. They were unsuccessful, and the
Lovely Clarisse
went down with all hands about fifty miles off the South Carolina coast.”

Bee and I shared a look. Custis paused for a moment, then continued. “When news of the sinking reached Charleston, the Confederate army dispatched crews to the area around Felony Bay to try to recover the buried gold, but they were never successful. Other treasure hunters tried after the war, but they didn't find anything either, and in the intervening years most people have come to assume that the stories of the Confederate gold were just tall tales.”

“Did Uncle Charlie ever hunt for the treasure?” I asked. “Daddy said he did a bunch of treasure hunting before I was born.”

“A number of years back, he apparently became obsessed with the
Lovely Clarisse
treasure. When your grandfather was still alive, he even tried to get him to deed Felony Bay over to him.”

“How come Daddy never told me?”

“You know that he and your uncle Charlie never got along.”

I nodded.

“Since you have only one uncle, I think your dad was trying not to make things worse than they already were.”

“Do you think Deputy Simmons was digging for treasure?” I asked.

Custis shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, but it sounds possible. Maybe the property was bought by a developer who thinks he's going to get paid twice—once when he finds the gold and again when he sells the land.” He made a note on his legal pad. “I'll sniff around and try to learn more. No guarantees. If it's public information, I'll be able to tell you, but if it's not, I won't be able to divulge it.”

I nodded, knowing better than to object. Daddy had always told me that one of the most important things a lawyer does is protect the privacy of his or her clients. “How much do you think they paid for the land?”

“Based on the assessed tax value, I would guess maybe around two million dollars.”

“And you said Mr. Barrett handled it?”

Custis nodded. “And he's the firm's senior partner . . . at least until your father comes back.”

“There are a few more things we need to know,” I said.

“Okay. If I can tell you.”

“Was Uncle Charlie the real-estate agent?”

“That's certainly not private information,” Custis said. “I'm pretty sure he was. I know he listed Reward, so I assume he also listed the smaller parcel. I'll check to make sure.” He made another note.

I tried to think of other questions Daddy would have asked. “When real-estate agents sell property, don't they do write-ups to describe what they're selling?” I knew they had done it for Reward Plantation, because I had seen a copy of a fancy brochure.

“Yes.”

“Was there a Felony Bay brochure?”

“I'll find out.” Custis nodded as he jotted that down. “What else?”

I thought about how to express my next question, but I also knew that Custis wasn't going to like answering it.

I chose my words carefully. “If Daddy had decided that Felony Bay belonged to Mrs. Middleton, and if he was right, then wouldn't it have been like stealing for people to have sold that land to somebody else?”

Custis sat back and thought for a long moment. “Wow,” he said at last. “You really are your father's daughter. The honest answer is that I don't know the answer, but I'm inclined to say no. Your father was operating on a certain moral perspective, not necessarily a legal one. The fact is that Mrs. Middleton moved off the property some years back, and so technically her claim under heirs' property was no longer valid.”

“From what you said before, she got driven off because Uncle Charlie charged her too much rent.”

Custis nodded. “But the fact that she moved off is still the primary issue. Your father was doing something because he thought it was the right thing, but it certainly wasn't anything he had to do in a strict legal sense.”

I thought about that. Then I nodded to Bee and stood up. “Thank you very much for your time, Custis,” I said.

I was disappointed at some of the things I had learned, but I couldn't really be angry at Custis or Mr. Barrett. I understood that Mr. Barrett had probably had no choice but to sell every single bit of Reward in order to repay Miss Jenkins. He probably didn't know that Daddy was maybe going to give the land to Mrs. Middleton. He only knew that the Felony Bay property was worth two million dollars, and that he and the other lawyers needed the money. I also realized that Custis wasn't going to make himself any friends and might even get himself in big trouble with the firm's other lawyers if he started digging into things like this.

However, I did not work for Force & Barrett. I was going to push as hard as I could.

“I'm going to try and find out exactly what happened here,” I told Custis. “I need to know what my daddy was planning to do when he broke up the land, and if I can prove that he was going to give it to Mrs. Middleton, I'm going to try and make sure that's what happens.”

He looked at me and smiled. “If there's any twelve-year-old in the state who can do it, it's got to be you.”

“How soon do you think you might be able to get us the answers on those other questions?”

Custis raised his eyebrows and thought about that. “I'm pretty busy, but I ought to be able to get them in the next day or two.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded. “Just for the record, Abbey. I'll help you, but if you make this thing a big problem for our clients and for the firm, I won't be able to talk to you anymore. At least on anything that concerns Felony Bay. It doesn't mean I don't personally support what you're doing, and it doesn't mean we're not friends. It's just professional. Do you understand that?”

I nodded. For the first time ever, I felt like Custis and I were going to have to be careful about what we said to each other.

A
fter we left Custis,
we walked up State Street, past the old brick houses of the French Quarter, through the market, and onto Anson Street. We turned onto Pinckney Street just past a barn where big carriage horses were being harnessed to a wagon, and we ate lunch in a little white house called Cru Café that has maybe the best French fries in the whole world. Unfortunately I wasn't very hungry.

I was pretty sure I understood at least part of what was going on, and every single bit of what I understood made me angry. It seemed obvious to me that Daddy had been working to get Mrs. Middleton her land back before his accident. But considering everything that had happened since then, I was starting to wonder if the two could be connected. If they were, it was tough to figure out where to start. We had run into a wall, and to get around it we would need more help than Custis could give us. I knew he didn't want to break any lawyer rules, and he didn't want to get himself in trouble with Mr. Barrett. I really couldn't blame him.