The Girl from Felony Bay

by J. E. Thompson

  Another thing I’d wondered about for a long time was just how Mr. Barrett came to be so friendly with Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons, because on the surface that just didn’t seem to make any sense. Mr. Barrett was supposed to be smart and high class, which Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons certainly weren’t. Tom Blackford found out that Mr. Barrett loved to gamble as much as those other two. which most people didn’t know but which pretty much explains how those three knew each other. Tom Blackford also found out that Mr. Barrett was a lousy gambler—he owed big money to some other gamblers and was desperate to find a way to pay it back. Miss Jenkins’s safe must have seemed like the perfect thing to him.

  Another thing that Tom Blackford wrote about was that Bubba’s wife, Esther, who was Miss Jenkins’s nurse, had no idea of the robbery plan. About the only thing she did wrong was to tell her jerk husband that the doctors were pretty sure Miss Jenkins wouldn’t ever be able to move or speak again. Bubba mentioned that to Mr. Barrett and Uncle Charlie one night during a poker game, and their plan began to take shape. After all, even if she saw them steal her stuff, how was some paralyzed old lady ever going to testify against them?

  According to Tom Blackford, Mr. Barrett cooked up the idea of “finding” the treasure at Felony Bay because he knew that Uncle Charlie had been a treasure hunter years earlier. Mr. Barrett also decided that Daddy was the logical choice to take the blame because he was supposedly the only one besides Miss Jenkins who knew the safe combination. If Mr. Barrett ever felt bad about framing and killing his partner, he never let on. Uncle Charlie had always resented Daddy for working hard and being smart, so he went along with it, too. Bubba just wanted the money and didn’t care who got blamed. Tom Blackford also wrote that from the very beginning Ruth had seemed to feel worse about it than the others.

  Custis says that Uncle Charlie and Ruth’s blabbing strategy isn’t going to keep them out of jail once the trial gets started. He says that it’s an “open-and-shut case,” and that Uncle Charlie and Ruth, along with Mr. Barrett and Bubba, are going to be “breaking rocks in the hot sun.” Custis says Ruth probably won’t go to jail for as long because when Bee and I testify at her trial, we’ll both say that she seemed to feel bad about what was happening. However, Custis is pretty sure the other three will each get convicted of three counts of attempted murder—one count being Daddy and the others being Bee and me—which means they won’t be out of jail for a good long time. That is just fine with me.

  Custis says that another thing that’s going to make it an “open-and-shut case” is that Miss Jenkins is going to be able to testify, because she’s been getting better and better and can actually talk a decent bit now, and she’s known the truth about who stole her gold the whole time. It turns out that Bubba had called Esther one day; he suckered her into thinking he had an emergency and that she had to leave Miss Jenkins’s house to help him. While she was gone, Mr. Barrett and Uncle Charlie snuck in and cleaned out the safe.

  They thought Miss Jenkins was asleep in her wheelchair, but she was actually wide-awake and saw them take everything. Because of her stroke all she’d ever been able to say was “Stole it.” Everyone assumed she meant Daddy. They had no idea she meant Uncle Charlie and Mr. Barrett, but now that she’s better, she’ll get that across loud and clear in the trial.

  Another thing Tom Blackford wrote that I hadn’t known about: According to Uncle Charlie and Ruth, right after they finished cleaning out Miss Jenkins’s safe, Mr. Barrett called my father and said he had a big problem and needed to have a private conversation. He asked if they could meet at Daddy’s house rather than downtown in their offices. Thinking it was probably more bad news about Mr. Barrett’s cancer, Daddy wouldn’t have been suspicious. I was off at school, which meant the house was empty. They went into Daddy’s library, and when Daddy’s back was turned Mr. Barrett hit him over the head with a lead pipe. Then he tossed a bagful of Miss Jenkins’s jewelry around the room, got the stepladder from the kitchen, put it up, and loosened some panels in the ceiling that Uncle Charlie had told him about. Custis says Mr. Barrett’s going to claim that he never meant to kill Daddy, but I don’t think the jury’s going to buy it any more than they’re going to believe he wasn’t trying to smother Daddy the day the police caught him in the hospital.

  What is both scary and amazing is that Mr. Barrett and Uncle Charlie and Bubba almost got away with everything. If Bee hadn’t arrived when she had, and if we hadn’t gone walking around the plantation and found the No Trespassing signs, I probably would have believed them when they announced finding the treasure. If that had happened, it’s likely that no one would have ever found out the truth, and Felony Bay would have added one more mystery to its list.

  “Bacon’s done,” Bee announces. “Stop daydreaming and make the eggs.”

  I force myself to shake off all my heavy thoughts, push back from the kitchen table, and stand. I pour most of the bacon grease out of the pan but keep just a little bit for making the eggs. “What about after? Swimming again?” I ask.

  Bee nods. “And then let’s go see what’s happening on the cabin.”

  I smile. Exactly the choices I would have made.

  We eat our eggs and bacon, and we’re just finishing with the dishes when Grandma Em comes into the kitchen. “Good morning, girls,” she says. Grandma Em says that after almost forty years of teaching and being a principal, the one luxury she insists on is the ability to sleep until eight o’clock in the morning. Bee and I are in big trouble whenever we make too much noise and wake her up early.

  Now she looks over at the three rashers of bacon that have been left on a plate beside the stove. “Thank you, girls,” she says with a smile. She sees that we are on our way out the door. “What do you two have up your sleeves on this last day of summer vacation?”

  We tell her we’re going to jump in the river and then head over to Felony Bay to check on the new house.

  “Come get me after your swim, and I’ll walk over there with you,” she says.

  Forty-five minutes later the three of us walk out the plantation drive and then go left on the dirt township road to where the old dirt track winds down to Felony Bay. The dirt track used to be pretty hard to find, but now it’s starting to look like a regular road with well-worn tire tracks since the construction crews have started rebuilding the cabin.

  As we start to see the sunlight glinting off the water of the bay, more memories come flooding back. I remember how Bee and I told Custis and Grandma Em what we had seen the day the police dug Uncle Charlie’s crate out of the sand. Then, when Bee’s dad came home from India and spent over a month here, we sat down with him and explained how Mrs. Middleton’s family had lived in that Felony Bay cabin since the 1870s without ever paying rent, but how Uncle Charlie had kicked her off by suddenly starting to charge rent she couldn’t possibly afford. We also told him that Daddy found out what Uncle Charlie had done and that he had been just about to formally give the land back to Mrs. Middleton when Mr. Barrett hit him over the head and put him in a coma.

  Bee’s dad was all ears, because he already knew a whole lot about heirs’ property and how a lot of African American people have gotten cheated out of valuable land over the years because they didn’t have a legal title and didn’t know that they could get one. But what he didn’t know about were the stories about Felony Bay and the Lovely Clarisse and the rumors of buried Confederate gold. And he also didn’t know what Bee and I had seen in the hole the day the police were digging up the evidence, so we told him all of that, and then all of us kept our mouths shut tight.

  Once Bee’s dad got involved, it didn’t take long for a judge to decide the Felony Bay land should never have been sold to Mr. Barrett and the others and that it still belonged to Daddy. After that, Bee’s dad got together with Custis, who now has power of attorney for Daddy’s stuff, and Custis totally backed Bee and me up, saying that it was absolutely clear Daddy intended to give the Felony Bay property over to Mrs. Middleton. Bee’s fath
er said that since Daddy was still in a coma, it wouldn’t be right to give his property away, even though he agreed it was the right thing to do. Instead, Bee’s dad told Custis he wanted to buy the property from Daddy, which he did, and then he turned around and gave it to Mrs. Middleton along with all the legal papers so there would never be any confusion ever again about who owned it.

  The whole thing cost Bee’s dad a lot of money, but he said it gave him great pleasure to see another descendant of what he called the Greater Force Family get their due. Bee’s dad was also the one who paid to have the cabin fixed, and now in few months Mrs. Middleton and Skoogie will move back into an old, but brand-new, house.

  I also know that there were other reasons that Bee’s dad bought Felony Bay. One night I overheard him talking to Grandma Em in the kitchen when they thought Bee and I were asleep, and I learned that the real reason he insisted on buying property that Daddy was actually going to give away was to make sure there would be money for me to go to college someday, just in case Daddy never wakes up. I almost walked into the kitchen and told him it wasn’t necessary because Daddy is going to wake up; I know it even if nobody else does. But then I thought about how absolutely amazing it was that a person whose ancestors had once been slaves owned by my family was doing something incredibly generous to make sure I was going to be okay. Daddy says there are some moments in life that are just too perfect to change, and I decided that was one of them. For once I managed to keep my big mouth shut and creep back up to bed.

  As Bee and Grandma Em and I come around the last curve on our way down to Felony Bay, we hear a saw blade buzzing through wood and a hammer pounding nails. When the cabin finally comes into sight, the shingles on the new roof sparkle in the sun and the new windows gleam.

  “I still remember the look on Mrs. Middleton’s face,” says Bee.

  “Me too,” I said, smiling as I think back to the day after the papers were signed and the property legally belonged to Mrs. Middleton.

  Bee’s dad hired a backhoe, and Bee and I showed him where to dig. All of us were there, along with Grandma Em, who had picked up Mrs. Middelton and Skoogie and brought them down. The backhoe operator dug down about six feet, and then Bee and I told him to stop. We got into the hole and used shovels, but we only had to dig down another foot or so before we hit the same rotten crate the police backhoe had grazed. We dug all around it and carefully brushed off the layer of sand that remained on top. The black-stenciled letters were very faint, but we could still make them out. They said PROPERTY OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.

  When we tried to pry up the boards, they were so punky with age and rot that they pretty much crumbled. We tore them off, looked inside, and saw the neat stack of gold and silver bars, each one stamped with the letters CSA. It wasn’t as large as the crate Uncle Charlie had buried, and there wasn’t as much gold, but it was more than enough to change Mrs. Middleton’s and Skoogie’s lives hugely for the better.

  We wave to the carpenters who are working on the cabin, then head along the path that runs along the river for several hundred yards and circles back to the big house. The day is hot and quiet, and the breeze at this time of year has pretty much died. It is cooler in the shade but just as humid, and this is also where the mosquitoes hang out. After just a few seconds they are buzzing around our heads and trying to land and get a good bite. Grandma Em picks up the pace and leads us along the path so quickly that Bee and I nearly have to trot to keep up.

  In addition to everything else that happened this summer, Bee and I have become business partners. In the offices of the law firm that is now called Force & Pettigrew there is another much smaller sign behind the receptionist’s desk. It says FORCE & FORCE INVESTIGATIONS, just in case anybody wants to hire two twelve-year-old detectives. It’s kind of a joke, but truth be told, Bee and I would love it if somebody came along and hired us.

  So far no one has, but for right now that’s fine with me. After all the craziness we went through with Felony Bay, I’ve been very happy to while away the rest of the summer riding ponies with Bee, swimming in the Leadenwah River, and reading books in the shade of the big live oaks.

  Of course the other thing I’ve done this summer is spend a lot of time thinking. There have been lots of times like right now when I find my mind drifting back to everything that happened in the past year and looking at it differently. Bee and I solved one part of the mystery of Felony Bay, but that was the easy part. For me the other part of the mystery doesn’t involve treasure but the mystery of why people do the things they do.

  For example, what made Uncle Charlie and Mr. Barrett and Bubba Simmons so greedy that they would stoop to robbery and murder? What made Ruth go along with it?

  At the same time, what made Mrs. Middleton struggle out to the bus stop on her walker to help me the day Jimmy Simmons was choking me? And what made Skoogie risk his life with Green Alice? What made Miss Jenkins force herself to finally speak the words she’d wanted to speak for months?

  I know part of the answer to all those questions involves willpower, character, and courage. But how does one person end up with so much strong willpower and character and courage when another person has only laziness and greed? I’ve been wondering about all these things a lot, and so far the answer seems to be that it isn’t whether people have money or education, or whether they’re born into a “good” family. Instead, for each of us our willpower, character, and courage end up being the result of the little decisions we make all by ourselves every single day. Just like grains of sand add up to make a beach, our choices add up to making us who we are.

  I’ve also decided that who a person is deep down can be a moving target, and that means I have to keep an open mind about people. I’ve tried to do that, and over the past couple months I have even become friends with Jimmy Simmons. His mother got him into that special school program that helps kids with dyslexia, and getting in seems to have made him realize that he isn’t just a stupid kid. Now instead of being a miserable jerk and a bully, Jimmy’s actually become sort of a nice kid, at least for a boy. So maybe it’s more than just willpower and character and courage. Maybe it’s also having somebody give you a break once in a while.

  Also, as part of this willpower, character, and courage stuff, I constantly think about the fact that two hundred years ago my own family owned slaves, among them Bee’s ancestors. I badly want to believe that even though my ancestors made some terrible choices by owning other human beings, I’m not doomed to follow in their footsteps and make the same kinds of bad choices. Jimmy Simmons is part of the reason I can believe that’s true. He is already trying hard to become a much better person than his father ever thought of being.

  I’ve come to believe there isn’t any reason that Jimmy won’t succeed. And all I have to do is look at Bee and her friendship with me to see that members of one generation don’t have to make the same mistakes as people in an earlier generation, and even more, they can forgive the bad things done by a previous generation.

  I figure I might never understand all the mysteries we discovered at Felony Bay, but I know one thing. It comes down to choices, and we have to make them every single day. Some people chose badly, others chose well. I need to keep making good choices, and I need to get smarter so I’ll be able tell the difference between good ones and bad ones. It’s clear that a lot of people, even adults, get pretty confused about which choices to make.

  “Will you stop thinking already,” Bee says with a laugh.

  I turn to look at her and shake my head as if I’m clearing out all those heavy thoughts, but of course I’m not. They seem to stay with me no matter what else I’m doing. I look out past Bee at the river, where the sunlight turns the brown water the color of caramel. She is absolutely right. It’s the last day of summer, and it’s time to have fun.

  “Race you to the dock,” I say, knowing it’s time for our third swim of the day. “The loser has to clean out the stalls tonight.”

  I start to sprint,
but Bee already saw the challenge coming. She is racing along the path ahead of me, running fast for home.

  Acknowledgments

  A big part of my desire to write this book comes from having a fourteen-year-old daughter, who was twelve when I started writing The Girl from Felony Bay. Her pony at that time was also named Timmy. Another part of my desire stems from my love of the Lowcountry sea islands. They are places of haunting beauty, and while some have become resort developments, others remain much as they have been for the past several centuries, quiet and rural with tight-knit communities.

  While Reward Plantation and Felony Bay are imaginary, I would like to express my appreciation to the Sinkler family, whose friendship has made it possible for me to spend time over the years at Rosebank Plantation, unquestionably the inspiration for Reward Plantation.

  Furthermore, I would like to thank Lieutenant Steve Sierko of the Charleston Police Department for his patience and willingness to answer my numerous stupid questions about police procedure and all kinds of other things relating to police work.

  I would be incredibly remiss if I did not thank Stephen Barbara, my packhorse agent, who carried me to HarperCollins Walden Pond Press and negotiated the sale with this wonderful book group. I refer to Stephen as a packhorse not because he is plodding in any sense of the word, but because of his refusal to be deterred by failure and his steady, unstinting hard work on this book and others. Am I getting heavy yet, Stephen?

  Also, thanks to Jordan Brown, my tireless editor who refused to leave any question unanswered, any inconsistency uncorrected, and any plot opportunity unexplored. The book would never have become what it is without his insight and insistence on perfection. Thank you, Jordan!