by Ann Cook
“Mrs. Stark?” Brandy ducked her head a little and flashed her ingratiating smile. “I called a few minutes ago. I’d like to ask you a few questions—about early Micanopy.”
“Reckon you can set a spell.” Arthritic fingers pulled the door wide, and for a second Mrs. Stark studied Brandy. Apparently she passed muster. As Brandy stepped into the sparsely furnished living room, Cora Mae turned toward an archway into the next room. “Just fixin’ to have a cup of coffee. Much obliged if you’d join me.” She began hobbling toward the kitchen.
The front room smelled musty and little used. Brandy followed across a threadbare beige carpet, past a rump-sprung rocker, and an overstuffed sofa. A black velvet wall hanging of two kittens decorated one wall, the sort sold by roadside vendors. Over a scaled-down brick fireplace hung the picture of an Indian astride a horse. Both heads drooped toward a cliff below. Brandy recognized “The End of the Trail,” a popular fixture in less sophisticated homes years ago.
In the small kitchen Cora Mae picked up a carafe from an electric warmer, poured coffee into two mismatched mugs, and set them on the metal-topped table. The aroma of baking chicken and the stronger odor of collard greens filled the air. This must be the room where Cora Mae spent most of her time.
“I’m clean out of cookies,” she said. “I could rustle up some light bread and jelly. That’s what I’m fixin’ for a snack.” She pulled a stick of butter, a loaf of white bread, and a tiny creamer from the refrigerator.
Brandy glanced at her watch—already 2:00—and realized she hadn’t eaten lunch. She nodded and joined Cora Mae. Cora Mae slathered two slices with butter and what Brandy surmised was homemade strawberry jam, and the two women settled themselves companionably on hard straight chairs. “Glory be, I been feeling poorly,” Cora Mae said. “It’s my arthritis. Too much stooping for too long, picking them beans and peas and cabbages, I reckon.”
Out the window, Brandy could see neat rows of tomatoes and green beans fenced with chicken wire. Cora Mae gazed dolefully into her cup, then glanced up with those sharp, blue eyes. “Now, what was it you had in mind, young lady?”
Brandy decided on a direct line of questioning. “I know about moonshining in these parts during the twenties. You must’ve heard stories.” She took out her small notepad, prepared to take notes.
A slight smile twitched Cora Mae’s lips. “Corn likker. Made right good ‘shine.” She paused for a second. “I hear tell.”
“You won’t be surprised to learn the senior Caleb Stark engaged in the trade.”
Cora Mae looked back steadily, showing neither dismay nor embarrassment. Brandy pushed on. “I believe he carried on some of the business at the dry goods store. I’m especially interested in the revenue agent who was there before he was killed because he was there the same day as Ada Losterman.”
“Sure ‘nuff,” the older woman said, again with a little smile. “I figured you’d get around to her. I talked to my brother-in-law the other day.” No surprise there.
“At the time,” Brandy went on, “Mr. Stark told a reporter—and the Sheriff and Town Marshall—that Ada came in asking about work. Apparently the revenue agent came in that day to collect a bribe. I’m curious to know if they met.”
“Lordy, how you going to find out now?” Cora Mae took a sip of the steaming coffee, so strong that Brandy had to half fill her cup with cream. “Now, I got no special feeling for those Starks myself. Truth is, some were a sorry lot. They’s not my people, you know. I’m a Steadly.” The Starks, they’s my husband’s family. He passed two years ago—ornery as all get out, but then”—her dismissive tone eased—“we got on pretty well anyhow.” Brandy didn’t suppose the Steadlies stood any higher in Lily Lou Irons’ estimation than the Starks.
Cora Mae sat back and fixed Brandy with a drill-like gaze. “Before I go into what I’ve heard about them times, you got to let me know what you found out already—you know, about that poor Losterman girl’s passing. Always been curious about it myself.”
Reluctantly, Brandy repeated what she’d told Lily Lou. Would Cora Mae relay the information to her brother-in-law? In a place the size of Micanopy, once Brandy divulged any facts, she might as well tell the whole town. After all, Cora Mae did say she talked to Caleb, even if she thought the Starks inferior.
Brandy switched topics. “Did your husband have any old family photographs? Maybe an album with a picture of old Caleb?”
Cora Mae sat back, rubbed one leathery hand across her mouth, and reflected. “He didn’t have no album like you got in mind. But seems like we got an old scrapbook of a thing up on a closet shelf.
I mean to pass it on to my kids. Got a daughter in Williston and a son plumb down in Tampa. Some Starks once lived down there.” She rose again slowly and shuffled through the door back into the living room. Brandy had seen her bedroom, opening off at one side. She waited. In a few minutes she heard the slow scuffle of Cora Mae’s slippers returning.
In both hands she carried a ragged scrapbook with torn covers, edges of paper hanging out of each side. She set the book on the table and began to turn through it, past tattered graduation announcements, newspaper clippings, a few letters, a recent wedding photograph, and at last stopped at a portrait. Brandy felt a little thrill of discovery. It was a World War I soldier in uniform. All men probably posed for a photograph when they first donned that uniform. The cap, the neatly pressed shirt, the black tie and broad belt were familiar by now. But in the youthful face she recognized the aging son’s features—the same wedge-shaped forehead, the narrow jaw that gave him a pinched look, and small, close-set eyes. Brandy jotted a brief description. Private Stark looked no more like her own father or grandmother than the Marshall or Adrian Irons. It was difficult to see any of the three as Hope’s father.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Stark. I appreciate your digging it up for me.”
Cora Mae glanced with disfavor at the portrait and closed the scrapbook. “Old Caleb took after the Starks. Now, my husband—he favored his mother’s side of the family, thank the good Lord.”
“Do you know if Caleb owned a car?”
“I got no idea. But if he was carrying ‘shine back and forth from a still in the scrub, he’d need one.”
“I also learned that Ada borrowed the phone in the dry goods store,” Brandy added. “We don’t know who she called.”
Cora Mae pursed her lips, as if reflecting. “The phone was one they had in them days. It hung on the wall,” the older woman said. “You rang the operator to get connected. I recollect it there, even when I was a young ‘un. It was in a separate little room old Caleb used as an office.” She shook her head, speculating. “He likely met with the revenuer in there. Money wouldn’t hardly change hands out in the store.”
“Do you suppose he kept a stash of liquor there, maybe for his best customers?”
Cora Mae took another sip of coffee. “‘Shine you talking about? I reckon he might, but all the fellers in town would know he was selling.”
“What if Ada saw what was going on in there, I mean, when she used the phone? What then?”
The clear blue eyes surveyed Brandy again, carefully. “You thinking about that old boy getting hisself killed around about that time?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”
“Finding a stash of corn likker—even money changing hands with the revenuer—wouldn’t be no reason to do a murder, young lady. Bribing officials to stay in business was an everyday thing.”
“No, it wouldn’t be enough of a reason,” Brandy said, trying to picture the scene—the wooden floor, the long counters of tools, men’s and women’s overalls and cotton dresses, pots and pans and everyday sheets and towels—wagons and Model Ts parked in front. “No one knows when or where the revenue agent was killed. Caleb’s son says he heard the man got too greedy. What if his father decided to stop paying the agent of
f, and the man insisted on getting his money? What if old Caleb decided to get rid of him for good?”
“Lordy,” said Cora Mae. “I reckon if someone stumbled on a murder, the guilty feller would have good reason to commit another. You reckon all that business has something to do with that lawman’s murder a few days ago? That Captain Hunter?”
Brandy shrugged. “They say blood will have blood,” she murmured, remembering MacBeth.
But could anyone still “bring forth the secret’st man of blood?” In this quiet little Florida town more than one murder was committed eighty-one years ago. And now, she believed, a third.
* * *
After leaving Cora Mae’s house, Brandy sat in her car for a few minutes, surveying her notes. She liked the blunt-spoken Cora Mae, but blood was thicker than water. Cora Mae would still harbor loyalty to her husband’s family. She might not tell Brandy all she knew, and she almost certainly would alert her brother-in-law to Brandy’s visit.
Still, Brandy had learned several useful facts. She closed her notebook cover and wrinkled her forehead. The only problem was that she had developed too many possible culprits—Caleb Sr., certainly, and Zeke Wilson. On the same suspect horizon loomed the wealthy veteran, Adrian Irons, and his ambitious wife, Sybil Ann. The righteous Mrs. Haven and her husband, otherwise known as Abigail and Isaac, could have eliminated the mother of the little girl Mother Haven coveted.
Brandy thought once more of her grandmother’s theory of time and swerved around a corner toward the gates of the old cemetery. She hesitated, then turned down the gravel road, stopped, and stepped out of the car. The cemetery was calmer. The iridescent sheen of a grackle flashed up from a cedar tree, and a red-tailed hawk sailed across the sky. In tall grasses at the edge of the grounds, Katydids trilled their high-pitched song, and the faint scent of cedar and pine drifted from the nearby woodland. No other living thing moved.
A short walk later, she stood before Ada Losterman’s monument. She couldn’t explain what brought her there. Brandy found herself looking up. Shelley described Keats’ final destination, “The dead live there and move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.” She liked to think of a luminous Ada, now whipping around in ethereal space/time.
She fastened her gaze on Ada’s tall, shapely figure, on the delicate fingers clasping the small book, at the chiseled planes of her stone face. Was either of those men’s appearance reflected in her grandmother? Actually, Hope resembled the statue more than either portrait. Brandy’s gaze fell on the lines from Poe’s elegy. The statue’s donor expected someone to recognize themselves as the “fiends below”—or were they an oblique confession?
“I’ll discover who he was, Ada,” she murmured. “I’ll find the “Secret’st man of blood.” Then she realized she didn’t know whether a man or a woman killed Ada, a total stranger or a friend.
On the drive home, she forgot to check behind her for the small silver car.
* * *
Brandy parked under an oak in front of the café, and on an impulse, crossed Cholokka Boulevard and looked through the plate glass window of Treasures and Trinkets. Snug lounged near the rear, talking with his usual cluster of scruffy pals. In another aisle a woman in a white eyelet cardigan and scoop-necked shirt stopped, picked up a Wedgwood vase, checked the bottom, glanced around inquiringly, then set it down and started out of the store. Snug was still engrossed in his conversation.
Seething, Brandy stepped into the store and interrupted Snug. “I’m coming back with Grandmother,” she said. “You don’t have proper records and you’re keeping Grandmother in the dark about operations. The store’s not doing any business but you’re making money. We mean to find out what goes on here.” Brandy didn’t know Hope’s schedule, but she’d manage to bring her here to confront Snug. If illegal transactions were taking place, her grandmother could be liable.
Brandy didn’t linger. Back outside on the sidewalk, a hulking figure in a plaid shirt, denim pants, and hips like bulkheads strode toward her, carrying a paper bag from the pharmacy—thorny Aunt Liz. She could be a lineman for the Chicago Bears—except their dispositions would be gentler. Her little eyes targeted Brandy.
Two heavy Oxfords thudded to a stop. “Still in town, more’s the pity,” Aunt Liz said. “We don’t cotton to outsiders snooping around, you hear? Most especially newspaper people.” She thrust her face forward, and her thick neck disappeared into powerful shoulders. “The Wilsons got nothing to say to you!”
Brandy felt skewered, but she stood her ground. “I’m only trying to find out what happened to my great-grandmother. It was eight-one years ago. Surely, there’s no harm in that!”
Aunt Liz did not agree. The heavy face drew nearer. “I don’t trust you people farther than I can swing a cat. Digging up dirt on folks, making up foolishness, stirring up trouble. Keep your nose out of our business, you hear? You got no call to go snooping through my grandpa’s records, trying to blacken his name!”
Aunt Liz glared and lumbered on past toward a pickup truck parked at the curb. Brandy wondered what prescription she carried that was strong enough to heal her, then realized she must pick up prescriptions for the old man in her care. He was good-natured himself only in comparison to his daughter.
Brandy checked her watch—almost 4:30—and hurried across the street and up the outside steps to her apartment. She found Kyra in the living room, stretched out on her stomach on the worn rug, a fascinated Brad sitting on a blanket before her. The two were stacking his large red and blue blocks. As Brandy came through the door, he squealed, “Ma-Ma!” and held up chubby arms. It pleased her that he still chose her rather than his sitter, however competent.
“Hi, boy,” she cooed, reaching down to scoop up his squirming little body. Kyra pushed herself up, straightened her jeans, and ran her fingers through her hair.
“Sorry to be so late,” Brandy said. She shifted Brad to one hip and slipped the canvas bag from her shoulder. “A couple of interviews took longer than I expected.” She set Brad on the floor, and as she searched her pocketbook for her wallet, thought to ask, “Do you happen to know anything about Savage Wilson’s daughter Elizabeth? Grant calls her ‘Aunt Liz.’”
Kyra rolled her eyes. “She’s, like, bad news. I’d steer clear of her. She’s got a temper that won’t quit.” She stuffed the bills into a pocket and glanced up at Brandy, serious. “Crossing her is, like, a real no-no. She’s all family, all the time. Up for assault and battery a couple of years ago. She thought some guy was cheating her precious ‘papa.’”
Brandy could believe it.
Kyra picked up her notebook and Measurements of Social Work Research and turned to leave when she suddenly stopped. “I almost forgot! I’ve got something to give you. My boyfriend found a photo of Zeke Wilson at his grandfather’s house. He scanned it.”
“I’m glad Grant doesn’t share his aunt’s phobia about privacy.”
Kyra scrabbled through the notebook and pulled out a sheet of paper. “A distinguished looking guy I got to admit. I may, like, wind up in a classy family, after all—never mind Aunt Liz.” The grandfather was no prize, either, Brandy thought. Grant, who seemed like a decent and certainly a helpful fellow, didn’t “take after” that branch of the family, as Cora Mae would say.
Brandy looked into the stern features of a strongly built face—straight, prominent nose, deep-set eyes, out-thrust jaw. Ezekiel Wilson was clean-shaven and had light-colored hair, carefully combed to one side. He wore a high white collar and a business suit, a more refined and heavier version of the athletic figure she’d seen in the smaller photo as the newly elected Sheriff. In this one he appeared to be about fifty. Did he look sensitive enough to write the concerned letter fragment? But, of course, such thinking was nonsense. She shouldn’t judge feelings by physical appearance. Caleb Stark’s photograph did not reveal an attractive looking man, but neither did it tele
graph criminality. Adrian Irons was an enigma. The portrait of the state senator was intended to present him in a favorable light, dignified and confident and it did.
Brandy could not honestly say any of the three resembled her grandmother. The danger was in imagining a likeness where none existed.
By the time John had solved his cornice problem at the Irons’ house and came home, Brandy had fed Brad and was shoving two Lean Cuisines into the small microwave and pouring iced tea. John was good-natured about quick meals when she was busy and quick to don the chef’s role himself as needed. Tonight, over chicken and rice and peas, she recounted the day’s events.
When she had finished, he frowned slightly and locked eyes with her. “You’ve excited concern in several households. Not to mention hostility. Montgomery Irons says people here are pretty insular. His wife may be interested because she’s bored with such a small town, but he advises you to let sleeping dogs lie—especially after what happened to Captain Hunter when he began asking questions.”
Brandy pressed her lips together before saying, “The unctuous Mr. Irons isn’t off the hook himself—or at least his grandfather isn’t. I may be on the trail of a World War I Micanopy veteran, and he was one of the three I’ve identified. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
He smiled grimly. “Fools rush in—etcetera.” The two could have ping-ponged trite sayings all night, but the phone rang. Brandy picked up the kitchen wall extension. As she continued to listen, she smiled.
“Mrs. Able?” It was Sheshauna. “You wanted to talk to somebody in Rosebud Washington’s family?
“I located an old lady who comes from that family. Like, she knows a lot of family stories. Most of the Washingtons died out or moved away.”
