Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  50

  Later that afternoon, following a few hours’ sleep and a shower, I drove into Bridgeport to the courthouse. I felt groggy and disconnected, out of it, my mind a beat behind, my body a step slow. My head hurt, my ears were ringing, and I couldn’t hear very well.

  Kathryn was asleep in Sister Abigail’s room, too frightened to be alone, too weary to do anything but sleep. Her homecoming had been difficult for me to watch. Father Thomas and Sister Abigail actually broke down. Still in shock, she didn’t seem to know how to take it. Even allowing for her condition, things were different between us. There was a distance, a polite coolness that let me know she blamed me for what had happened and could never fully forgive me for leaving her.

  Steve had questioned her, but it was obvious she didn’t know why they had tried to kill her. He was now busy with the fish camp crime scene, though it wasn’t in his jurisdiction, and the fallout from stopping the demolition. Reid was in custody waiting to be interviewed, which Steve had invited me to be in on. I was headed to the courthouse to gather more information in preparation for what was likely to be more interrogation than interview.

  I found the same large African-American woman working alone in the clerk’s office, an open bag of Double Stuf Oreos and a pint of milk on her desk.

  “Where’s everybody today?” I asked.

  Her mouth was full of Oreos and she had to finish chewing before she could respond.

  She said something, but I couldn’t make it out. I explained about my hearing and asked her to repeat it.

  “Lunch,” she said. “I cover the office while they go eat.”

  She stood, reached down, grabbed the pint of milk, took a long pull on it, replaced it, wiped her mouth with her hand, and walked over to the counter.

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, smacking as she used her tongue and lips to get cookie off her teeth. “I get to go early, which is good, ‘cause I don’t do good when I get hungry. My sugar gets messed up and I get bitchy. One time I passed out.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I tried to look interested in her story and concerned for her health at the same time, all the while nodding vigorously.

  “What can I help you with today?” she asked.

  “I wondered if you’d let me take a look at the deed for St. Ann’s land?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  That was easier than I thought.

  “It’s all a matter of public record,” she said.

  “How do I find it?”

  “I’ll help you,” she said. “I know right where it is. Lots of people looking at it lately.”

  “Really?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting up. “Like who?”

  She started walking toward the vault and I followed her.

  “Gulf Coast Company people mostly. You know... lawyers and developers. Chief of police came in and looked at it, and a few folks I didn’t recognize.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Over the last few months,” she said.

  “No. When did Steve Taylor come in?”

  She shrugged. “It’s been a while.”

  When she got to the entrance of the vault, she stopped. “Go on in,” she said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I stepped around her and walked inside. She went back to her desk, shoved two cookies in her mouth and palmed a couple more, then joined me.

  Inside the vault, she withdrew a large book—awkwardly because of the cookies in her hand—laid it on a table, and opened it to a marked page. “This is the log book,” she said, swallowing the remainder of Oreos in her mouth. “It’s where we log in the information from the deed—date, time, who recorded it.”

  She ran her finger down the first column until she found what she was looking for.

  “How many deeds related to this property you wanna see?” she asked.

  “How many are there?”

  She said something, but I couldn’t hear it, and I had to ask her to repeat it.

  “Three most recently,” she said.

  “Three?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “all recorded on the same day.”

  Every time she talked louder, she spoke more slowly and condescendingly, as if my impairment were mental not physical.

  “I’d like to see all three if I can.”

  “Piece a cake, baby,” she said, popping the other two cookies into her mouth, then talking around them before chewing. “They all in the same spot. Two of them’s recorded within minutes of each other.”

  “Really? That’s unusual, isn’t it?” I asked.

  I waited as she chewed up and swallowed the two cookies.

  “Not necessarily. We’ll know in a minute.”

  While she pulled the deeds, I wondered how there could be three deeds registered in one day within a few minutes of each other. The abbey’s land meant millions to whoever owned it and billions to the Gulf Coast Company, and I found it difficult to believe it wasn’t somehow connected to all that was going on.

  A moment later, she returned carrying several legal-size papers stapled together in three packets.

  “Everything looks in order,” she said. “I don’t understand why she did what she did, but there’s nothing illegal or inaccurate about the recordings.”

  She handed me the packet on top.

  “This one’s the oldest,” she said. “It’s from when Floyd Taylor bought it the first time.”

  Beneath “Articles of Agreement” centered at the top and written in Old English, the normal legalese included dates, descriptions, signatures, seals, and witnesses. At various places on the document, small white stickers with typing on them revealed the fees, date and time it was recorded, and by whom.

  As I scanned the deed, I noticed her periodically looking longingly at her desk. I wasn’t a mind reader, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t that she was anxious to get back to work.

  “So Floyd and not the paper company owned this?” I asked.

  Her face contorted and she shrugged. “Way back then there wasn’t really any difference. Sometime Mr. Floyd would put it in his name and sometime in the paper company’s, but it was all the same in those days.”

  “What are these numbers?” I asked, pointing to one of the stickers.

  “This the certificate number. This the book and page number of the log I showed you.”

  “And there’s nothing odd about his deed?”

  She shook her head. “Only thing it shows is what a good businessman Mr. Floyd was. This land’s already worth a hundred times what he paid for it and soon it’ll be a thousand.”

  “If they get the road through.”

  She cut her eyes at me and shook her head. “Oh, they’ll get the road through. Monster this size can eat a lot of people and it just be an appetizer.”

  I wondered if all her metaphors involved food, concluded it was a safe bet they did, and, when she snuck another peek at her desk, I figured that subconsciously the devourer who had inspired her use of figurative language was most likely the Cookie Monster.

  “Here’s the next one,” she said as she handed it to me. “This the one where Mr. Floyd deeded his land to this woman, ah, Grace Taylor.”

  “Who is she?”

  She shrugged. “A relative, I guess. Don’t really know.”

  “Do you know if he had any children?”

  “No idea, but I can tell you who can tell you.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Jane Willow White,” she said. “She was Mr. Floyd’s secretary when she was young.”

  “Do you know where I can find her?”

  “Back of the courthouse most any time,” she said. “She works in the driver’s license office, but most any time you look for her, you can find her out back taking a smoking break.”

  I glanced over the next deed. It looked much like the first one, only with different names, numbers, dates, fees, and witnesses. When I saw the two witnesses, I blinked and looked at
it again to make sure I had seen what I thought I had. Looking again confirmed it. Father Thomas and Sister Abigail had been the witnesses when Floyd Taylor deeded what was now the abbey property to Grace Taylor.

  Handing me the last one, she said, “Now, this is where it gets a little unusual—though it ain’t illegal or nothin’. This is a quit claim deed and it’s registered just a matter of minutes after the other one.”

  I looked at it, comparing it with the previous one. Much was the same, including the two witnesses.

  “So just a few minutes after getting the land from Floyd, Grace just gives it to St. Ann’s Abbey?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  “You’d have to ask her.”

  “Why wouldn’t he just deed it directly to the abbey?”

  She shrugged, her enormous lips turning up. “I got no idea.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “No, it don’t.”

  “Have you ever seen this done before?”

  “No, not like this,” she said.

  “And you can’t think of any reason to do it this way instead of giving it directly to—” An idea stopped me in mid-sentence.

  “What is it?”

  “Can I borrow your phone book?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Who you callin’?”

  “John David Dean,” I said.

  “No need to look him up,” she said. “He’s in the speed dial.”

  We walked back into the outer office and within a minute she had him on the line. The moment she handed me the receiver, she was back in the cookies, trying unsuccessfully not to rattle the bag too loudly.

  Without preamble I said, “What happens to the land if the abbey closes?”

  “What?” he said. “Who is this?”

  “John Jordan. It’s very important. You set it up, you have to know. If St. Ann’s closes, what happens to the land?”

  He hesitated. “Didn’t we already discuss this? Well, they told me to cooperate with you, and it’s not a big secret anyway. It’d go to the paper company. It’s in the articles of incorporation. They told me that’s what they wanted it to say.”

  “Who did?”

  “Father Thomas and Sister Abigail.”

  “Listen,” I said, “this makes a world of difference. Does it specify the paper company or does it say previous owner?”

  “Previous owner,” he said, “but it’s the same thing.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” I said, and hung up.

  51

  Miss Jane Willow White was right where I was told she’d be.

  She was an older woman with the look of a lifelong smoker, her skin wrinkled and leathery, her voice gurgley and hoarse as if filed with an Emory board and filled with phlegm. She had short, white back-combed hair that didn’t budge—even in the strong breeze.

  She sat on a wooden picnic table next to an ashtray, sucking on a cigarette as if it were the world’s only source of true happiness. The ashtray next to her was full of rainwater, gum wrappers, and cigarette butts.

  “Jane White?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” she said, her manner and voice gruff and challenging.

  I told her who I was, what I wanted, and about my hearing.

  “Cheap bastard,” she said.

  “You don’t even know me,” I said, smiling.

  Without smiling back she said, “Floyd.”

  The back of the courthouse and the front of the sheriff’s station were less than twenty feet apart, their walls forming a wind tunnel. We would have had to raise our voices over the sound of the wind regardless, but with the ringing in my ears, she had to practically yell.

  “Really?”

  “I worked for him for nearly twenty years... and you know what he left me? Shit. Nada. Zip. Zilch. A big fat nothing. I gotta spend my golden years working for the damn DMV. He could’ve given me a million and not missed it, but what’s he do? Leaves it all to the paper company—as if they need it.”

  “Not that you’re bitter,” I said.

  Not only was the wind around us cold, but it blew Jane White’s cigarette smoke into my face, and I wasn’t sure which was stinging my eyes more.

  “So whatta you wanna know about the son of a bitch?”

  “Did he have many women?”

  “What’s many? He had a few. None for very long. He always managed to maneuver away from them before they sunk their claws in too deep.”

  “Have any children with any of them?”

  She smiled for the first time. “How’d you know?”

  I didn’t think she was really asking, so I didn’t answer.

  “He did have a kid. A girl. Not that he was a father to her or anything. He was just the donor. If you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” I said.

  Finishing her cigarette, she flicked it toward but not into the ashtray, pulled another from her pack, tossed it in her mouth with the acumen of a veteran, dug in her Polyester pantsuit and came out with a lighter, cupped her hands, and lit it.

  I asked, “Did he have any kind of relationship with her at all?”

  “None I know of––and I’d know. I arranged everything for him—including most of his women.”

  “What ever happened to her?”

  She shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest. She was put up for adoption. Floyd probably paid the mother off to do it. There’s probably some Little Miss Heiress running around somewhere without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of and she’s worth millions. Well, she would’ve been.”

  “He didn’t leave her anything in his will?”

  “Same as me. Not a nickel. No one. Not either of his sisters or their kids. Just that blasted paper company.”

  “So even if she found out she was Floyd’s daughter...”

  “Wouldn’t do her any good.”

  “If he was so stingy, why’d he give so much to St. Ann’s?”

  She let out a mean, smoke-filled laugh and gave me an elaborate shrug. “Exactly. Doesn’t that beat all?”

  “You have no idea?”

  “None. Well, that’s not true, exactly. I know without really knowing, you know? It’s obvious they had something on him.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone from the abbey.”

  “Blackmailed him for the land and the trust?”

  She nodded.

  “With what?”

  “Don’t know, but it had to be like one of them cookies they got over in the mall. Not just a doozie, but a double doozie.”

  52

  “We made a deal with the devil,” Sister Abigail said.

  “And now we’re reaping what we’ve sown,” Father Thomas said.

  We were standing in front of the chapel, the midafternoon sun providing just enough heat to make it bearable. I had confronted them with what I had learned at the courthouse and they seemed not just willing, but eager to unburden themselves.

  “Are you saying you blackmailed Floyd into giving you the land and the trust for the abbey?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t blackmail. It was... an agreement.”

  “It was us agreeing to his terms,” Father Thomas said. “If anything, it was him bribing us.”

  They both seemed older now—especially Father Thomas, whose already weakened physical state seemed now also an outward manifestation of his psychological and emotional fragility. They had been through a lot over the past few days and the cumulative effect on them was palpable.

  “The land and the trust was hush money?” I asked.

  They both seemed to consider that for a moment, before nodding. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” Sister Abigail said, “but that’s exactly what it was.” She shook her head. “Funny how you can justify things.”

  “Rationalize,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Sister Abigail said. “A lot of people would be helped. He wasn’t doing anything better with the land.”

  “We
were giving the selfish, bitter old bastard a chance to do something good for once,” Father Thomas added.

  I considered him. He was angry, his face contorting in disgust, and I wondered if it were directed toward himself or Taylor.

  “It wasn’t that hard for us, but the truth is, you can rationalize anything,” Sister Abigail said.

  A cold gust of wind blew in, puffing out Sister’s habit and tossing our hair, but neither of them offered to step inside, and I wondered if on some level they wanted to avoid the chapel, as if their confession would profane it somehow.

  “What exactly were the terms he wanted you to agree to?” I asked.

  Sister Abigail considered me intently. “I’m sure you know,” she said.

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Well, let’s hear them,” she said. “I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

  “Why won’t you just tell me?”

  “I’d rather you say it,” she said. “It’s difficult for me.”

  “Is that it or are you just wanting to find out what I know?”

  She smiled a wry smile.

  “He wanted you to take in his daughter,” I said. “Raise her for him and her mother.”

  She nodded. “In a way, he was giving the money to her. She’d have a place to live—a family. She could get a good education, go to college, live here again if she wanted, and if the abbey ever closed, the land would go back to her. No one would ever know he had a daughter.”

  So Kathryn was Floyd Taylor’s daughter. They had confirmed it. No wonder Reid and whoever he was working for in the Gulf Coast Company had tried to kill her.

  “Why go to such lengths to conceal the fact he had a daughter?”

  “He was pretty old by then. It was embarrassing to him—especially considering who the mother was.”

  “A young slightly mentally handicapped girl who worked in one of the fish houses,” Father Thomas said.

  “He didn’t like kids anyway,” Sister Abigail said. “Never wanted any. And the thought that this young piece of white trash, as he called her, would get his money just about killed him. He said he’d rather die than have anyone know.”