Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff

by J. E. Thompson

  Finally Daddy turned and gave me a worried look. I had already guessed what they were all talking about. I could feel a whole bunch of butterflies swarming in my stomach, but I walked over to where they were all talking. As I got close they all stopped whispering and turned.

  “They want one of us to look at his face, don’t they?” I said to Daddy.

  “You are not doing it!” Grandma Em snapped.

  “That’s right, honey,” Daddy said. “You don’t have to do it.”

  I looked at the policeman and nodded. “I’ll do it,” I said, my voice coming out choked. Part of me was terrified and totally grossed out at the idea of looking at a dead man’s face. The other part of me needed to know if this was one of the men who had shot Yemassee.

  Daddy held my hand and walked with me, and we went to stand at the back of the ambulance. About twenty yards away, I could see the two ambulance attendants struggling as they carried the stretcher, since they couldn’t roll it on the muddy ground. Their feet were caked with brown goo, but the sheet covering the body remained perfectly white.

  They came up to us and put down the stretcher very gently. The policeman put his hand on the corner of the sheet and paused. “Are you ready?”

  I nodded and swallowed hard as my stomach bucked and churned. I had seen plenty of dead animals on the side of the road and deer hanging after hunters had shot them and plenty of dead doves and quail, but I had never seen a real dead person before.

  When the policeman peeled back the sheet, I gasped. The man’s face was whitish yellow. Thankfully his eyes were closed. I could see a small hole in the side of his forehead just in front of his ear. There was blood on his shirt, but not much. He had blond hair and a narrow face.

  “Do you recognize him?” the policeman asked in a gentle voice.

  I sucked down more air, once again tasting rather than smelling the man’s terrible stink. I didn’t open my mouth until I trusted myself to speak without barfing. “Did he have sunglasses on?” I asked.

  The policeman re-covered the face with the sheet, then he turned and walked over to another policeman. They spoke for a second, and the policeman returned holding a plastic bag in one hand.

  “He was wearing these,” he said, holding out the bag and showing me a pair of wraparound sunglasses.

  “Can you show me the face again, please?”

  He pulled back the sheet a second time and held the bag with the sunglasses in front of the face.

  I nodded. “That’s the man who shot the judge’s dog.”

  “Are you sure?” the policeman asked.

  “Yessir, absolutely.”

  When we finally finished and were able to start home, we loaded the ponies into the horse trailer Daddy had brought over. It was the first time he had driven since he’d woken up, but I didn’t say anything, because I was already in enough trouble as it was. Daddy and I drove back in the Suburban while Bee and Grandma Em followed in Grandma Em’s car.

  “You okay?” Daddy asked as soon as we got under way.

  I nodded.

  “It must have scared your pants off to find that body.”

  I nodded again. “Pretty much.”

  “You know, speaking of being scared, I know you’re worried about me going back to work.”

  I glanced over at him but didn’t say anything.

  “Being scared cuts both ways. To think that you and Bee have been riding around this island trying to find a dog that was stolen by some dangerous criminals—” He slapped the steering wheel and shook his head. “I’ve got to be able to trust that you have more sense than that.”

  “Sorry,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. I hated the way he could say things that made me look at situations from a different angle and see what I’d missed.

  “As you know, Willie Smalls has been accused of helping those men, but I believe he’s innocent,” Daddy went on. “I’m trying to keep Willie from going to jail. Willie isn’t any risk to me, but those other men are a big risk to anybody who finds them.”

  “Yessir.”

  “So no more looking for Yemassee.” He glanced over at me, and his eyes were hard. “Understood?”

  “Yessir.”

  When we got back to Reward, Daddy stopped at the barn so I could unload the ponies. Bee showed up a couple minutes later, and we washed Timmy and Buck, then fed and watered them and finally oiled our tack.

  “Did Grandma Em give you a really hard time?” I asked as we worked.

  Bee nodded. “She didn’t yell as much as make me feel terrible for scaring her so bad.”

  I nodded. “Me too. Are you grounded?”

  “No, but I can’t go look for Yemassee anymore. What about you?”

  “Same.”

  When I walked into the house a few minutes later, Daddy was just ladling some steaming okra gumbo that Grandma Em had given us into two bowls, and we sat together at the kitchen table. Grandma Em’s cooking helped make me feel better, just the way it always did. In addition to the gumbo, Daddy had tossed a quick green salad and pulled a baguette out of the freezer and stuck it in the oven to warm up.

  I hadn’t really noticed, but he was doing more and more every day. He had his trial tomorrow, and I knew without even asking that he would be going to the office day in and day out from now on. I didn’t like it, but I realized there was nothing I could do to keep it from happening.

  As we started to eat, Daddy cleared his throat in a way that told me he had something more to say. “I know you’ve got school starting,” he began. “But when you’re not doing homework or sports, I want you to stick close to Reward. It looks like we have a killer running around on this island, and until the police catch him, I don’t want you roaming.”

  Now that I had sat down and started to eat, I realized how exhausted I was. Finding that dead body had taken every bit of fight out of me. Rather than arguing, I just nodded. “Yessir.”

  I finished my dinner and was about to excuse myself and head up to bed when I realized Daddy had grown very still and intense.

  “Something the matter?” I asked.

  He looked up, blinking his eyes like he’d been someplace far away. “I was thinking about the gas-company robbery and stealing the truck, and Willie Smalls, and then those men taking Yemassee. I’m trying to see some connection between all those things.” He shook his head. “None of it makes sense, but I’m thinking maybe they’re connected.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked. In spite of how tired my brain was, I had been wondering the exact same thing.

  “I can understand somebody getting Willie drunk so they could steal his keys and then breaking into the gas company. They probably hoped to find a bunch of cash lying around, and when they didn’t find any, they stole one of the trucks.”

  “But why would they steal Yemassee?”

  “Exactly.” He took a spoonful of gumbo but then stopped with the spoon just an inch or two from his mouth. “I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but didn’t you say Yemassee was carrying something in her mouth?”

  I nodded. “Something long and white.”

  Daddy finally put the spoon in his mouth. When he swallowed, he asked. “Maybe something that came off a gas truck?”

  He looked at me, and I looked back at him. My eyes were growing so heavy, I could barely see. Neither one of us had any answers.

  When I climbed under the covers that night, I let Rufus get on my bed. I almost never did that, because Rufus had a tendency to cut farts that would choke a horse. Still, in spite of the risk of getting gassed, I needed his warm, furry body to cuddle.

  I closed my eyes and had to concentrate hard to keep the image of that dead man’s face from rising up. Rufus’s clean dog smell and the steady sound of his breathing helped drive it away.

  The other thing that helped was planning what I would do later on that week. Daddy had forbidden any more searching for Yemassee. He was only trying to protect me, and he was going to be really mad and really disappo
inted if he found out I had disobeyed. But I also knew he was taking a lot of risks himself by getting involved with Willie’s case, and when an adult is too stubborn to admit they need help, sometimes kids have no other choice but to disobey. Thursday was going to be the first day I wouldn’t have after-school stuff, and I decided that afternoon, with or without Bee, I would take a riding tour. I tried to ease my conscience by telling myself I wouldn’t be totally disobeying. After all, Daddy hadn’t told me not to ride, just to stay close to Reward.

  Leadenwah Island was a small place, and so anywhere I went on the island would be “close” to Reward in most people’s minds. Bee and I had checked out Bishop’s Point, but we hadn’t looked on Sinner’s Point, and I knew that was one of the places Judge Gator liked to walk Yemassee. It made sense that if she had gone hunting that day, she might have gone back to some place she’d been before, where she liked to sniff around. It had been a long time since I had ridden over to Sinner’s Point and explored all the back roads. It was time to do it again.

  Of course I would only be enjoying the beautiful scenery. If I just happened to spot a stolen Boykin spaniel, well that would be a complete coincidence. If I just happened to rescue the stolen Boykin spaniel, it would only be because, under the circumstances, it was the absolute right thing to do. Ditto if I just happened to spot the shorter man who had been in the truck that took Yemassee and told the police where to find him. After all, Daddy needed help, even if he wouldn’t admit it, and Judge Gator needed his dog back. In my mind both of those things were important enough to risk disobeying a direct order from Daddy.

  Seven

  In the morning Daddy did something else that shocked me: he drove Bee and me to school on his way to work. I sat in the front seat and watched him like a hawk, making sure he was okay. I felt bad about thinking it, but I almost wished he couldn’t drive because it would mean he couldn’t go to work very easily.

  In the afternoon I had tennis practice, and Bee had volleyball, and then Grandma Em brought us home. Miss Walker’s is a serious school, and since they believed in starting the year off with a bang, we both had a ton of homework. Daddy worked late, because in addition to Willie Smalls’s hearing, he called me to say that he already had another big case. I was afraid that was going to happen a lot. People thought Daddy was a great lawyer, and probably a lot of them had been waiting for him to get back to work.

  I ate dinner at Bee’s house that night and also on Wednesday. Bee and I had a few classes together, like history and math, but I took Spanish and she took French, and then we played different sports, so we saw each other only for a few quick minutes between classes. Even at dinner we didn’t have much chance to talk, because Grandma Em filled up the first meal telling us about her slave-graveyard project, and then on Wednesday Professor Washburn showed up for dinner.

  He brought a little bouquet of flowers for Grandma Em, and from the way he smiled and jumped up from the table and pulled out a chair every time Grandma Em wanted to sit down, I almost got the impression he wanted to be her boyfriend. The whole thing struck me as funny, because I never imagined old people having boyfriends or girlfriends, but then I started to watch the way Grandma Em acted with Professor Washburn. She was all smiles and twinkly eyes as soon as we sat down. It was kind of embarrassing to watch two old people acting that way. I could sense Bee having the same reaction. I didn’t dare look in her direction, because I knew if we made eye contact we would start giggling and never stop.

  In spite of how weirdly funny I thought Grandma Em and the professor were, I found their conversation pretty boring as they talked about this graveyard and that graveyard and which ones had been mapped out and which ones were still rumored to exist but remained undiscovered. Blah, blah, blah.

  I was tired and thinking about all the homework waiting for me back at my house. By the time we finished the main course, it was everything I could do not to let out a big, rude yawn.

  I glanced at Bee, but unfortunately she was sitting with her hands folded in front of her, looking across the table at the professor just like she was some straight-A student, which of course she was. She even asked a couple of questions, and I wanted to kick her under the table, because she was making dinner last even longer.

  I looked away from her, back at Grandma Em. I was desperate to catch her eye and let her know that I needed my dessert so I could get to studying. The professor was still in the middle of droning on about different parts of the island. He’d been talking about Bishop’s Point earlier and was now talking about Sinner’s Point. I was barely listening, but then I caught the words “Hangman’s Bluff.”

  In spite of myself, I said, “Pardon?”

  Professor Washburn smiled, seeming delighted that I was suddenly showing interest in graveyards, but I wasn’t. It was just that his mentioning Hangman’s Bluff made me remember something totally different.

  “Daddy won a big lawsuit over that property a couple years earlier,” I said.

  “It’s a large, undeveloped property,” the professor said.

  “A man named Mr. LaBelle used to own it,” I said.

  “Yes,” the professor said. “I believe he still does. Are you suggesting that’s a place we should explore?”

  I shuddered and shook my head, not because of Yemassee or Hangman’s Bluff or the dead body we had found, but at the memory of Mr. LaBelle’s daughter, Donna, who had gone to Miss Walker’s, where Bee and I went, and had been the nastiest girl I ever knew.

  “Mr. LaBelle isn’t exactly friendly with our family,” I told him. “Daddy sued him back when Mr. LaBelle wanted to build a whole lot of condominiums out on Hangman’s Bluff.”

  “I think I remember reading about that,” the professor said.

  “Mr. LaBelle was trying to get around the laws against building stuff.”

  “Zoning laws?” asked Grandma Em.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Mr. LaBelle had a lot of money, and Daddy says he must have thought the people on Leadenwah were a bunch of ignorant hicks and were too stupid to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. The zoning laws say Leadenwah is only allowed to have farms and plantations and homesteads, not shopping centers and condominiums. A bunch of people on the island hired Daddy to be their lawyer, and he beat Mr. LaBelle like an old drum. Mr. LaBelle ended up losing a whole lot of money, and they sold their house and moved away.”

  Just about then Grandma Em glanced at her watch. “Oh my, the time has totally gotten away from me. You girls have homework. Why don’t you take your plates in the kitchen and get your dessert there? Then Abbey can leave whenever she needs to.”

  I didn’t need any more encouragement. I thanked Grandma Em for dinner and said good night to the professor, then followed Bee into the kitchen.

  “At least we don’t have to talk about graveyards anymore,” I whispered as we got ice cream out of the freezer and Bee cut slices of freshly baked pecan pie. “Did you really think that stuff was interesting?”

  “I thought you did, too, when the professor started talking about Hangman’s Bluff.”

  “Not because of graveyards,” I told her. “Only because it reminded me of Donna LaBelle.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “Obviously, because she moved away before you came, but just hope she never moves back.”

  I shuddered again, and I suddenly got one of those weird feelings that seem to come out of nowhere. It told me that where Donna was concerned, luck was running against me. That was even more reason for us to take a little pony ride out to Sinner’s Point, just to make sure there was no sign that the LaBelles had come back to Leadenwah.

  When I whispered that to Bee, she looked at me like I was out of my mind, and in hindsight maybe she was right.

  Daddy was in the kitchen eating a salad and watching the Weather Channel when I walked into the house. The announcer was talking about a storm that seemed to be heading someplace between central Florida and North Carolina.

  I had been mulling over t
he bad feeling I had in my bones as I walked home. “Is there a way to tell if somebody is getting ready to build something new around here?” I asked.

  He glanced away from the TV. “Hello to you, as well. Thank you for asking if I had a nice day. Yes, I did. And I hope you did.”

  I went over and gave him a kiss on the cheek and said a proper hello. “Now can you answer my question, please?”

  He kept one eye on the TV as he talked. “Building permits have to be filed with the county. They’re public information.”

  “Could you look and see if anybody has got building permits?”

  He gave me a squirrelly look. “Why would I be doing this?”

  “At dinner tonight Grandma Em and her friend were talking about slave graveyards.”

  Daddy nodded. “She’s told me about her project. It sounds interesting. Desecrating old graveyards has been a problem around here for a long time, but it’s against the law. If people are building a new house or developing property and they find a graveyard, they have to report it, and then they have to properly rebury the bodies. Is that what you’re trying to find out about?”

  “No,” I said.

  Daddy turned away from the TV by then and gave me one of his looks. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “The professor brought up Hangman’s Bluff and said he thought Mr. LaBelle still owns it. I thought he’d sold it.”

  Daddy shrugged. “I’m not really sure what’s happened to that land. What do you care?”

  “You know how people get hunches?” I asked. “Well, I got a hunch that maybe Donna LaBelle hasn’t gone away for good.”

  Daddy rolled his eyes. “Donna LaBelle, your old nemesis.” He laughed. “I’ll look into what’s happened to that land, but it’s going to be a day or two.” He pointed at the TV. “It might take even longer if this storm throws a wrench into everything and we have to spend time closing shutters and tying things down outside.”