City of Grudges

by Rick Outzen

  “No, I’ve got it. Stop worrying.”

  At the morning meeting, I let the staff vent.

  “What the hell is going on?” said Jeremy, holding his triple shot, peppermint latte in his left hand and waving his right. “Protesters, smashed windows, you getting beaten every other night. Are our lives at risk?”

  Mal said, “Shut up, Jeremy. The only people wanting to kick your ass are the karaoke singers at The Red Garter that you trashed last week in your column.”

  “Well, how many times can anyone listen to ‘Sweet Caroline,’ ‘It’s Raining Men,’ or ‘Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover’ before they pull out a gun and shoot up the place?” he replied.

  Jeremy had a point. I told the staff about how he might have helped us locate Pandora Childs to soften the blow of Mal’s jab.

  Roxie ignored the Mal-Jeremy exchange. She wanted to restart the Best of the Coast sales. Summer had completed the database of the contact information of all the winners.

  “Summer and I plotted out who I will contact first,” she said. “We will exceed last year’s numbers by twenty grand.”

  Roxie had made a few sales calls yesterday from home and hadn’t gotten much push back. She said, “The flak over Hines and Frost surprisingly hasn’t hurt as much as I feared. People like our approach to reporting. We’re winning fans.”

  Finally.

  Yoste was missing, which made Mal furious. “He wrote his big cover story and has gone fishing.”

  I said, “I promised him he could take today off, but he needed to do a follow-up piece on Operation Cherry Bomb. He emailed me he has some interviews set up for later today.”

  Mal said, “You baby him. It’s got to stop.”

  Jeremy grunted in agreement.

  I outlined my cover story for them. Admittedly it had plenty of holes, but I promised them I would have it pulled together by Monday. As always, I sounded more self-assured than I felt.

  At a little before noon, I grabbed my laptop and headed to visit the North Hill home of Jacob Solomon and learn more about Celeste Daniels.

  When I had called to set up the interview, Mr. Solomon was more than happy to meet with me and talk about Celeste. After all, he was the one who gave Dare the yearbooks.

  Jacob Solomon lived in a little gingerbread house on a narrow side street in North Hill. In front of his house, a historic marker declared this was the site of the Queen’s Redoubt, a British fortification that the Spanish artillery blew up during the Battle of Pensacola in 1781. The Spanish rebuilt it and changed the name to Fort San Bernardo. When the United States government took over Pensacola in 1821, the British residents convinced Governor Andrew Jackson to allow the fort to deteriorate, out of pure spite. Nothing now remained of it, except the marker.

  Jacob and Ruth Solomon raised two sons and a daughter in the three-bedroom, one-bath cottage. Ruth had passed away two years ago in her sleep. The two sons, both doctors, lived in Atlanta and Miami. The daughter, Sarah, lived in Pensacola and worked as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

  I parked in the driveway under an enormous hundred-year-old oak. Before I began to follow the stepping-stones to the front door, Solomon opened a side door to wave me in.

  “Mr. Holmes, it is such a privilege to have you in our home,” said Mr. Solomon. “I told my older brother Caleb you were coming for lunch, and he was so jealous. We’re big fans of yours. What is it about Mississippi that it produces such great writers? William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, John Grisham, and you.”

  I wondered where the best place was to sit. Mr. Solomon motioned to a leather lounge chair by a bay window.

  “Mr. Solomon, please call me Walker. I only know five hundred words, and my goal is to put them in a different order every week and somehow tell a story.”

  He laughed and excused himself to get the sandwiches and iced tea with fresh mint he had prepared. The room where I sat must have been his study. Books filled the room, not only in the bookcase that covered an entire wall but also on the tables and stacked on the floor. On top of the table beside the chair was a book of crossword puzzles written in German. Under it, I spied a well-worn copy of Caesar’s Commentaries, written in Latin, of course.

  I shut my eyes for a few minutes as I heard Mr. Solomon whistling in the kitchen. I felt the love in this place. I pictured Ruth and Jacob sitting here with classical music on the stereo, reading and sharing tales of their days. I liked this house. The books had actually been read. Glancing up at the collected works of Dickens and Balzac above me, I thought if I picked up one of them the book would fall open to his and Ruth’s favorite sections. Generations had read these books and discussed them at dinner.

  I could hear a beautiful woman in a simple floral print dress saying, “Father, I am going to go grab that book, because I just know you remember it wrong!”

  The thought warmed me. A real library was haunted by the ghosts of everyone who cared for a book in it.

  “I’m a writer, too,” said Mr. Solomon as he returned, balancing a tray of tuna fish sandwiches and tea. Barrel-chested with shoulders even broader than mine, the past ninety years had stooped him over and shrunken him to less than five feet. But his walk still showed vitality, and his eyes sparkled. His voice, slow and richly deliberate, made every word seem important. It was not difficult imagining him as a teacher.

  “Ruth and I traveled all over the South visiting the childhood homes of great Southern authors. We went to the homes of O’Connor, Williams, Welty, Faulkner, and even the Sayre house in Montgomery and wrote about them, and we were fortunate to have our book published.”

  “I would love to read it,” I said, meaning it.

  We took our time eating, as people of his generation used to do. He asked questions about some of my past articles: deaths in the county jail, relocation of the downtown sewage plant, and the maritime park. I asked about his children, who were close to my age. He brought me a photo album of his grandchildren. He sighed when he saw a picture of his Ruth holding one of his daughter’s babies.

  After we rinsed the dishes, we talked about Celeste Daniels.

  “A gifted student, Celeste Daniels was in my first-year Latin class,” he said. “Smart and unafraid to show it. She reminded me of Katherine Hepburn—very athletic, sort of a tomboy, but still the boys were attracted to her. She bedeviled them on a regular basis though quite unintentionally.”

  Solomon had taught both at Catholic and Booker T. Washington. Later he became the dean of students at Washington, before becoming the principal of the school. But in the early 1970s he worked part-time at both schools. When Dare called him about Bo Hines, Mr. Solomon remembered a link between Hines and Wittman that predated Bo marrying Sue.

  “Celeste liked both boys. I think she was drawn to athletes like herself,” he said. “I taught both Bo and Jace. Neither of them was as good a student as Celeste. Bo worked hard but didn’t have the brain power. Jace had the brains but was too spoiled and lazy.”

  “Did she date both at the same time?”

  “Yes, sort of.” He paused for a second, trying to remember something. With his eyes still shut, he said, “Ruth and I chaperoned the proms for both schools. Usually freshmen didn’t go to those dances, at least not back then. Ruth felt Celeste did it to show off to her older brother and classmates. It was like winning a trophy for Celeste, or so my wife believed.”

  “How did Stan Daniels react to his baby sister dancing with his rival, Jace Wittman?”

  “Stan Daniels had no rivals. He operated on a different level than everyone else, but he watched Hines and Wittman like a hawk, never letting Celeste out of his sight at either dance. Pretty and popular, she would have gone to both dances, even if Bo and Jace hadn’t asked her. And, yes, Stan was so popular he had invitations to both dances, too.”

  I leaned over in the stiff chair, and it creaked. “Tell me about the day Celeste Daniels disappeared.”

  Mr. Solomon got up and walked over to the big bay windo
w that overlooked his rose garden. I didn’t want to rush him. Like the years and ghosts in his library, he would speak when he was ready. He touched a framed picture of Ruth in her wedding dress; she was smiling and radiant.

  When he turned to face me, he said, “Ruth and I talked about that day often. Celeste had been distressed all week, asked to leave class several times. When she came back to the classroom, she had been crying. Something was wrong.”

  He paused and shut his eyes. “When she first disappeared, I thought she might have run off to get away from her overly protective mother. Ruth and I believed she would show back up in a few days with tales of a road trip to Panama City, Mobile, or Biloxi. There was even a report that she had been seen hitchhiking, but that later proved to not be true.”

  “How did Bo and Jace react?” I asked Mr. Solomon, who looked even smaller than when I first walked into his house.

  He said, “Bo and his friends helped Stan and the Catholic High boys search for her. Jace walked around in a daze for a few days.”

  “Did you ever find out what was bothering her the week before she disappeared?”

  He shook his head. “No, we talked about it some in the teachers’ lounge, but we had no clue. The kids were pretty tight-lipped and didn’t seem to know either.”

  “Did you talk with Mr. or Mrs. Daniels about Celeste?”

  “I went to the principal, Sister Mary Thaddeus,” he recalled. “She thought it best if we left the family alone and let the authorities deal with the matter. I think she worried it might reflect badly on Catholic High and hurt enrollment.”

  He walked around the library, glancing at the books, then stopped at the window. Outside, the day was bright and young and a tabby cat chased butterflies along the stone walk. His eyes filled with tears.

  “The Daniels family fell apart when Celeste disappeared,” he said. “Stan went to college and became a successful lawyer, but his parents were never the same. I left Catholic the following year. The tragedy had taken away from me the joy of teaching there. I dreaded walking the halls.”

  “But you remained a teacher,” I said.

  “I took a break and enrolled in the Masters in Educational Leadership program at the University of West Florida,” he said. “Ruth’s parents helped us make ends meet, and I worked part-time at the campus library.”

  He pointed to his framed diploma on a stand in the bookcase. “When I graduated, the Escambia County School District hired me as a dean at Booker T. Washington, which put me on the track to be the school’s principal. I never taught in the classroom again.”

  Celeste Daniels’s disappearance clearly ate at him, like it did her brother, Stan. Did it bother Hines and Wittman? The tabby cat pounced on the butterfly, crushing it. Mr. Solomon winced.

  Thanking him for the lunch and the interview, I headed for the door.

  “Would you ever be available to come speak to our book club?” asked Mr. Solomon as he shook my hand. “Caleb would be so happy to meet you. You can talk about whatever you like.”

  “Sure, it would be an honor,” I replied, thinking, if I’m not in jail.

  31

  While I visited with Mr. Solomon, a scheduled blog post went live:

  BUZZ: HINES CASE TO GO TO TRIAL

  Sources inside the courthouse tell the Insider the embezzlement trial of road contractor Bowman Hines is back on track, and the state attorney will be ready for trial in two weeks, despite earlier rumors it would be delayed for Hines to work out a plea agreement.

  Assistant State Attorney Spencer wouldn’t be happy. Neither would Hines. I should be in Bo’s head right about now, which was exactly where I wanted to be.

  I had left my cell phone in the car and missed another dozen calls from the usual cast: Dare, Gravy, Spencer, Hines’ attorney, and a few numbers I didn’t recognize. Several left voice messages, which I never intended to listen to.

  I called Harden about Childs. He said, “My buddy found her early this morning in a coffee shop. When she heard that Hines was blaming her for the missing funds, she agreed to come meet with you. She should be on the road now and will be in Pensacola tonight.”

  “Where do I meet her?”

  “O’Riley’s on Creighton Road about nine o’clock,” said Harden. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  I checked my emails and saw the city clerk had the documents regarding the site work for the maritime park. That would be my next stop after I typed up my notes on meeting with Jacob Solomon.

  Finding a table at the Whataburger near the Pensacola Bay Center, I wrote up what I recalled from the conversation. Remembering what I heard was never the issue, but not letting my slow typing skills hamper the flow of words and thoughts was often a problem.

  Accessing the diner’s Wi-Fi, I made another post to the blog, one that would further push my insane plan:

  WHAT TROUBLED CELESTE DANIELS?

  Friends of Celeste Daniels, who has been missing since 1973 and presumed dead, tell the Insider the teen was very upset in the days leading up to her disappearance. Why? No one has come forward with that information . . . yet.

  At Pensacola City Hall, my reception was formal but not hostile. Florida had one of the most liberal public records laws in the country. All state, county, and municipal records were open for personal inspection and copying by any person. Some officials, like Sheriff Frost, tried to play games in releasing information, but in the end, they released just about anything you requested.

  The bored security guard always enjoyed my visits. I broke up his day of leaning over the desk and flirting with the secretaries.

  A secretary escorted me to a conference room where the proposals for the park project were stacked in neat piles, each about two inches thick. The only documents I wanted to read were those concerning Bo Hines’ portion of the original bid. I found the scoring sheet on which the staff had given Hines high marks for his company’s site preparation and infrastructure plan for the park. I reviewed the amendment from the development team dropping Hines Paving Company from their group after his arrest.

  Since the maritime park site was on Pensacola Bay where a fuel storage facility once stood, the land had some serious environmental “challenges.” The naysayers also complained about it being in the flood plain where it would be susceptible to hurricanes, so dirt had to be trucked in to raise the site fifteen feet. Those issues meant the site work was worth $9.5 million to Hines.

  All the bidders listed their subcontractors. Reading through Hines’ portion of the original proposal, I found $200,000 for JW Safety Consultants. I had never heard of the company. The bid gave a Pensacola post office box as the subcontractor’s address. I paid for copies of the pages referring to Hines Paving Company and went to find a place to hide out until my meeting with Pandora Childs.

  It was 3:58 p.m. The state attorney would figure out in a few minutes I was a no-show. He would have sheriff’s deputies look for me downtown. My hideout needed to be in the open but away from the happy hour crowds.

  I had a place for this: Five Sisters Blues Café.

  Five Sisters sat in the old “colored downtown.” The Jim Crow laws forced African American businesses and customers off Palafox Street to West Hill, which eventually became known as Belmont-DeVilliers.

  The neighborhood’s heyday was in the late 1920s and early 1930s during Prohibition when restaurants, stores, and pawnshops lined the streets and hot music thrived alongside the gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Whites mixed with blacks once the sun set, and the cops looked the other way as long as the payoffs were made.

  Five Sisters Blues Café opened during the roaring twenties and had survived recessions, depressions, the Klan, Baptist churches, and the new wave of street thugs. The youngest sister’s great grandson, Theodore Ware, had taken over the café around the time when I started the Insider. Theodore was so tall he had to duck through every doorway he entered. His callused hands swallowed up mine when we shook han
ds. His face always had a smile. When he wasn’t smiling, you ran.

  Theodore and I became friends when a deputy killed his uncle, Jericho Ware, in 2006 during a traffic stop. I refused to let the death go unnoticed. After a few more busted ribs, I exposed the bad guys. The deputy got off, but Theodore appreciated the effort.

  I didn’t visit Theodore at Five Sisters much because he wouldn’t let me pay for anything. Today I needed to be in a place outside my regular hangouts that had an electrical outlet for my laptop and wireless internet service. Theodore would take care of me.

  Five Sisters was slow on Thursday afternoons. An elderly black couple ate fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread at a table by the door. Two well-dressed young white women drank white wine at the bar and texted on their cell phones more than they talked. Every three minutes they shared their screens with each other, giggled, and sipped their wine. Joan Armatrading’s “Love and Affection” filled the room.

  Theodore was out, but his niece Maya put me at a corner table near the bar so I could keep an eye on the room. She brought me a bucket of four longneck Buds in ice and a basket of sweet potato chips.

  “Uncle Theo says you don’t pay, and I’m to keep the bucket full until you say otherwise,” she said.

  “No, I’ll pay,” I said, pulling a worn twenty out of my khakis.

  “Put it away. My uncle won’t even let us take a tip from you, Mr. Holmes.” She spoke matter-of-factly without anger or rudeness. Her nails were painted pink with zebra stripes.

  “Let me know if you want to eat,” she added. “Fried chicken is the special.”

  Many people stopped by the Five Sisters just to pass the time. They asked Maya about her momma or her aunts. They would see them all in church on Sunday, but life never got so busy they couldn’t inquire as to their daily welfare. It had always been this way in Belmont-DeVilliers.

  Firing up my laptop, I checked my blog. The comments had piled up, awaiting moderation. I approved them all, even one from Hines’ attorney stating he planned to file a lawsuit against me for defamation, libel, and anything else he could think up. My cell phone continued to vibrate in my pocket every few minutes. I ignored it.