Vindication

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “You got me. Smith?”

  “According to this, her name was Sarah Kelly Steerman.”

  I sat up at that. “Steerman is not exactly a common name. Could she be Chunk’s grandmother?”

  “Maybe. Sally is often a diminutive for Sarah.”

  “Maybe we’ve found her,” I said. “Is there any more information on her?”

  “Just that she was born in Nashville, Georgia.”

  “That’s near where one of my grandmothers lived. It’s in Berrien County. Can you do a Google search on Sarah Steerman or maybe Kelly Steerman?”

  “Sure.” She turned back to the computer. After a few minutes, she said, “Nothing. She doesn’t show up under either name.”

  “Didn’t she tell you that Gilbert was her second marriage?”

  “Yes. Her first husband died.”

  “If we assume that she lived the first part of her life in Nashville, she might have gotten married there. Let’s check the Georgia records. Try the Georgia Department of Public Health website for marriages in Berrien County.”

  Five minutes later, she had the information. I called James Hurt in Cordele and asked if he knew anybody in Nashville who could help us. He did.

  It was during the next week that everything started to come together, the little pieces of the puzzle falling into place. I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people in two states, ferreting out the little odds and ends that hopefully would come together and eventually give a picture that would free Esther.

  I coaxed Chunk Steerman into coming to Bushnell for the trial. I called him on his phone and asked if he was enjoying the barbeque at Fat Joe’s. “How did you know I was here?” he’d asked.

  “Chunk, you’ve got a very expensive monitor around your ankle.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that. Look, I need you to come to Bushnell for the trial.”

  “When?”

  “Next week.”

  “Not sure I can make it.”

  “Look, Chunk. Here’s the deal. You remember my friend from the truck stop? Jonathon?”

  “Uh, yeah. The guy what sucker punched me.”

  “He’s out in the parking lot at Fat Joe’s. A quick phone call and he’s going to be coming through the front door and hauling your ass out of there. He’ll either bring you to Bushnell or he’ll kill you. I wouldn’t really care which, except that I need you to testify to some stuff. Either way, you’re going to get badly hurt if he has to bring you down here.”

  “What stuff do I have to testify about?”

  “We’ll talk about that when you get here. In the meantime, my buddy will be keeping an eye on you. You make one false move, like trying to disappear or get rid of that ankle monitor, and he’ll be on you like fur on a rabbit. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll call you when it’s time for you to get on the road. Don’t screw with me, Chunk, or you’ll end up in an unmarked grave.”

  A little coaxing often goes a long way.

  The lunch break was over and we were ready to go. “State your name, please,” I said to the man on the witness stand.

  “Lionel Steerman. People call me Chunk.”

  “Your age?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Do you have a brother?”

  “Yeah. His name is Buford. We call him Biggun.”

  “Where do you live, Mr. Steerman?”

  “Outside Camilla, Georgia.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I own a chicken farm. I raise and sell chickens.”

  “Do you know a woman named Sally Steerman?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s my grandma.”

  “Is she your natural grandmother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How are you related?”

  “She’s my daddy’s mamma.”

  “Is your dad your natural father?”

  “He adopted me and my brother after he married my mamma.”

  I saw Meredith rising to her feet out of the corner of my eye. “Objection, Your Honor. Relevance.”

  “Mr. Royal?” the judge asked. Meredith had let me follow this line of questions longer than I had expected.

  “I’ll tie all this up with the next couple of witnesses, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Be sure that you do. Overruled.”

  “Do your parents still live together?” I asked Chunk.

  “No, sir. Mamma ran off with a truck driver when we were little. Our grandma helped my daddy raise us.”

  “That’d be Sally Steerman?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re real close.”

  “How’d you end up with a chicken farm?”

  “My daddy came into some money and he bought a piece of land and gave me half and Biggun half. Biggun has a hog farm next door to me.”

  “Does your grandma go by a different name now?”

  “Yes, sir. Well, sometimes.”

  “What is that name?”

  “Kelly Gilbert. But to me and my brother she’s still Sally Steerman.”

  “Mr. Steerman, I want you to think back to several weeks ago, the evening of March 13th, to be exact. Did you make a call to somebody and pretend to be an airline agent?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe to tell somebody that her plane was delayed?”

  “Oh, yeah. That was some kind of joke my grandma wanted to play on somebody. She called me at home and told me what she wanted me to say. She even sent me an email with the message and the phone number written down and told me she’d call me later that night and tell me when to make the call.”

  “Did you make that call?”

  “Yes, sir. Some woman answered the phone.”

  “And you gave her the message?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you remember the date of that call?”

  “No, sir, but it was the same night Biggun left to come down to The Villages.”

  “Did you come with him?”

  “No, sir. Not that time.”

  “Why did he come down here?”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Meredith was on her feet. “Hearsay.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Mr. Steerman, do you have any knowledge independent of what your brother might have told you, as to the reason he came to The Villages that night?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever ask anybody else about that visit? Like your grandmother?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Let me show you a picture marked as Defense Exhibit A. Can you identify the person in this picture?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s a picture of Biggun.”

  “Your brother, Buford?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know where Buford is now?”

  “No, sir. He left Camilla about a week ago. Ain’t nobody seen hide nor hair of him since.”

  I introduced the photo of Biggun entering the Hillsborough gate in The Villages, the one taken by the security camera on the night of the murder, as Defense Exhibit one. I picked up the picture of the back of the van entering the gate and showed it to Chunk. “Look at Defense Exhibit B. Is that a photo of Biggun’s van?”

  “I can’t tell from that picture if it’s even a van.”

  “Look at the device covering the license plate. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  “Yes, sir. It looks like a gadget that Biggun uses to beat tolls. He hits a switch in the cab and down the little doohickey comes.”

  “Your Honor, I’d like to introduce Defense Exhibit B into evidence as Defense Exhibit two for the purpose of showing the device that covers the license plate.”

  “No objection, Your Honor,” Meredith said. “We’ve stipulated that the pictures were taken on the night of the murder and at the gate to the Village of Hillsborough at Buena Vista Boulevard.” She’d seen both the photos as part of the pretrial exhibit list I’d filed and she’d taken the deposition of the security supervisor
who testified as to when and where the pictures were taken.

  I showed Chunk the picture of the van that I had gotten from the local Dodge dealer and shown to Amber Marris. “Does this look like your brother Biggun’s van?”

  “It sure does.”

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” I said.

  “Ms. Evans?” the judge asked.

  “No questions, Your Honor.”

  “Call your next witness, Mr. Royal.”

  “The defense calls Kelly Gilbert.”

  CHAPTER 49

  A WEEK BEFORE the trial was scheduled to begin, I made the five-hour drive from Longboat Key to Nashville, Georgia, for a meeting with a lawyer named Bill Perry. James Hurt had told me that Perry had lived his whole life in Nashville and owned banks and practiced law there for almost fifty years. He knew everybody and knew where all their secrets were buried.

  Perry was a pleasant man in his midseventies, tall and fit with a head of white hair. He welcomed me to his office and said, “James Hurt said you and he were law school classmates. He has a high opinion of you, and I told him I’d do whatever I could to help out. I understand you’re looking into the background of Sally Steerman. May I ask in what connection?”

  “She may be involved in a murder. I don’t have any evidence that she did anything, but her name came up in my investigation in an odd way. Did you know she now goes by the name of Kelly Gilbert?”

  “No, I didn’t, but I did know that Kelly was her middle name. Her first name was Sarah, but everybody always called her Sally to differentiate her from her mother who was also named Sarah. Sally left here a few years back after her husband was killed.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Car accident. He got T-boned by a big dump truck out on Highway129. The truck was coming out of a borrow pit area and didn’t stop. Said he had brake problems, but I don’t think anybody ever figured that one out. Anyway, Sally’s husband died at the scene.”

  “How long did she stay in Nashville after he died?”

  “About a year, I think. Maybe two. She got a pretty good settlement from the company that owned the dump truck, and she started seeing a lawyer from over in Adel named David Gilbert. They moved to Orlando and then he died of a heart attack.”

  “Did you know Sally well?”

  “Pretty well. She worked as a waitress in the diner across the street for a long time. Started while she was in high school, I think. It was actually kind of sad. She could have been somebody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was Miss Berrien County back in the sixties. She sang opera music like an angel. She was a natural. She’d studied under one of the voice teachers over at Valdosta State while she was in high school and walked away with the talent contest in the Miss Georgia Pageant. She got screwed out of the crown by an unscrupulous judge, so she didn’t get the scholarship money she needed to go to college. She came home and went back to work in the diner.”

  “Was the pageant fixed?” I asked.

  “This one was. One of the judges, a man named John Peters, was having an affair with the eventual winner and he manipulated the vote so that Sally didn’t even make the finals. Peters’ girlfriend won.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes. Years after the pageant, Peters, who was a car dealer in Atlanta, was diagnosed with a terminal disease. He told me how he fixed the pageant and asked me to set up a trust fund for Sally’s two boys. The money in the trust was more than enough to get them educated and set up in whatever they wanted to do after they graduated from college. He knew Sally wouldn’t accept any money from him directly, but he also knew she couldn’t turn down something that would benefit her sons.”

  “What happened to Sally’s boys?”

  “The youngest one is a doctor up in North Carolina and the older one is a drunk. He lives up in North Georgia somewhere.”

  “Did Sally ever find out about what happened with the pageant?”

  “Yes. Peters went to see her and told her what he had done.”

  “How did Sally take it?”

  “Surprisingly well. At first, she didn’t seem at all bitter, but as the years wore on and she became estranged from her sons, her husband got killed, and she got older, she became more and more bitter. She once told me that her life had all gone to hell when she didn’t win the pageant. She had become convinced that, had she won, none of the bad things would have happened to her later. Her life from the pageant forward just went downhill. Even the boys, whom she thought were the best things that ever happened to her, turned into disappointments. The doctor didn’t want to have anything to do with her, and the other boy didn’t even go to college. He pissed away, or drank away, I should say, all the trust money when he got it at age twenty-one. I just watched her fall apart over the years. I think the brightest spot in a lot of years was when she married David Gilbert and started a new life in Orlando. And then he died and the new life died with it.”

  “Do you remember who won the Miss Georgia Pageant that year?” I asked.

  “No, but I’ve still got a couple of copies of the program from the pageant. I remember that the winner was from Atlanta, so she’ll be in there.”

  Perry went to a file cabinet standing in the outer office and came back with the official program that had all the information of the contestants and pictures of each one. He thumbed through it for a few moments and then handed the program to me opened to a page. “That’s the girl. Miss Atlanta Northside, Polly Norris.” He turned a couple more pages and showed me another photograph. “That’s Sally Steerman, but she was using her maiden name, Sarah Kyle.”

  “Can I get copies of those pictures?” I asked.

  “Take the program,” Perry said. “I’ve got a couple more in the cabinet.”

  I arrived back on the island feeling like the old horse that had been rode hard and put up wet. I was exhausted from the five-hour drive to Nashville and another five hours back. My day’s nutrition consisted mostly of fast food and Diet Coke, plus coffee and the three donuts I’d had for breakfast while I drove north. I’d spent an hour or so with Bill Perry and turned right around and drove home. I called J.D. as I exited I-275 onto Highway 41 at Bradenton and asked her to order up some pizza and meet me at my house. I might as well continue my healthy eating routine.

  The house was empty when I opened the front door. I shed my clothes and jumped into the shower. The hot spray felt good on the bunched muscles in my back, and I started to relax a little. It had been a productive trip, but ten hours behind the wheel was brutal. I didn’t know how the long-haul truckers did it day after day.

  As I was drying off, I heard the front door open and close, and the smell of pizza, diluted by the steam from the shower, wafted into the bathroom. I put on a pair of well-worn shorts and an old t-shirt bearing the faded logo of Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant and padded into the Kitchen. J.D. gave me a quick hug. “You look tired,” she said. “Sit down and I’ll dish up the pizza. You want a cold beer?”

  I nodded, and sat, and marveled at my luck to have this beautiful woman to share my life with. We dug into the pizza, and I told her about my day. “Doesn’t your department have one of those computer programs that will age a person’s picture so that you can get a pretty good estimate of what he or she would look like many years in the future?”

  “I’m pretty sure we do. Why?”

  “Does it work the other way as well? I mean, could the program scan a picture of somebody today and get a pretty good likeness of what that person looked like forty years before?”

  “I can ask, but why?” J.D. asked.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if Olivia Lathom’s murder had something to do with that Miss Georgia Pageant.”

  “How so?”

  “Suppose Olivia had something to do with Sarah Kyle getting literally screwed out of the title. According to Bill Perry, over the years Sarah became very bitter about the whole thing. She might have been bitter enough to kill Olivia.
And then we have her stepgrandson driving what appears to be a white van into Hillsborough Village on the night of the murder and driving out again at about the time that would have gotten him to Brownwood in time to almost run into Amber Marris. He’s the same guy who accosted me in Darrell’s Diner. Then, her other doofus stepgrandson, Chunk Steerman, tried to bean me with a sock full of quarters.

  “Are you giving up on Ruth Bergstrom as the murderer?”

  “I don’t know. She had plenty of reason. We know she had to have given Esther’s manuscript to Olivia, but I’m not sure I can prove it. Ruth is living on the edge of poverty and hates her husband. She needed money and probably expected to get a piece of Olivia’s publishing money. Maybe Olivia stiffed her and really pissed her off.”

  “Enough to kill Olivia?” J.D. asked.

  “Maybe. Ruth certainly seems to be a cold one. And we know she’s been in trouble with the law before, including a stint in prison.”

  “But Kelly’s the one who got Esther to show her the gun, possibly to make sure that Esther’s prints were on it.”

  “Do you think we could call the geek again and see if he can run a recent picture of a person and see what she might have looked like forty years ago?”

  The geek agreed to give it a try, and I pulled a publicity shot of Olivia Lathom from my file, scanned it, and emailed it to him. Thirty minutes later we got a picture of what purported to be a likeness of Olivia Lathom when she was in her twenties.

  “J.D.,” I said. “I don’t want to let my suspicions prejudice this. Will you take the young Olivia’s picture the geek sent us and compare it to the headshots of the contestants, chaperones, sponsors, and whoever else shows up in the program?”

  I ate the last piece of pizza and watched J.D. match the picture of young Olivia to the shots in the pageant program. She would place the photo next to a headshot and move on. After about ten minutes, she looked at me and said, “I’ll be damned. Look at this. An almost perfect match.”