“Were you aware that Luther Carlisle intended to sell the land?” I pressed.
“The first MAT heard about this was a week ago. Lester was fit to be tied. He tried to talk to Luther, but the coward wouldn’t take Lester’s calls. Lester had some business in Central America, but he returned and was on this Sunflower County matter quick as he could be.”
“What are the terms of the land lease?” I asked. “Can it be terminated?”
“For cause. From our end. I find it mighty interestin’ that contamination is about the only reason MAT would halt the lease.”
I found that equally fascinating. “You’ve never had trouble with the Carlisles before?”
“Not a bit of it. Luther was glad enough to take our money and have us manage the land. That Jimmy Janks came in here and got Luther all goo-goo eyed with greed over his development scheme. Janks is the scoundrel who’s trying to turn good farmland into a subdivision, and I’d lay money he’s behind these weevils.”
“Do you know if Mr. Ballard spoke with Janks?”
Downs sipped the water. Talking calmed him. “Lester said he was meeting Janks. Lester had found some other land that wasn’t so fertile. He meant to propose a swap with Janks so he could develop the poorer land. He said he had a meeting set up, but Janks didn’t show, so he was taking the meeting to Janks. That’s the last I heard from Lester. This morning Lester didn’t answer his phone. He wasn’t in his hotel room. I knew something awful had happened.”
I got up and refilled Downs’s glass. He’d lost a coworker and friend, and he wanted answers. My sympathies were with him.
Downs sipped the water and continued. “Luther, that greedy gut, is tryin’ to roll over his own sister.” Contempt dripped from his words. “Still, I never figured him for a killer. Too squeamish. Goes against that genteel pose he strikes. But there’s no tellin’ what greed will do to a man. If he’s behind this, he’ll burn in Hell, because I’ll send him there.”
“Threats aren’t necessary,” Peyton said softly. “Sheriff Peters will find the guilty party.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Downs,” I said. “I know this is a terrible loss for you.”
“Lester was a good man. A decent man. He didn’t deserve to be killed and thrown into a river. And you can call it a threat, but I consider it a promise. Someone is going to pay.” He stood up. “While this is personal, it also involves an entire industry. If those weevils get loose on the rest of the cotton, it could destroy us.”
“Mr. Ballard, I know you’re worried. My associate, Ms. McRae, has a unique knowledge of the boll weevil. She isn’t here now, but when she returns, she’ll call you and update you on her studies regarding the insects.”
“I’m not nearly as concerned in studyin’ them as I am in killin’ them. I heard most of the cotton on the Carlisle land is destroyed. I can’t even get out there to check it.”
It intrigued me that Peyton failed to mention the weevils had only attacked the genetically altered cotton. That might give Downs a little solace, but I trusted Peyton had his reasons for staying mum.
“We’re hoping to have some answers soon. Then you’ll be able to check the property.” Peyton was kind but firm.
“Can you give me a time when this might happen?” Downs asked.
“I wish I could. This is our highest priority.”
Once Downs got to the land, based on the descriptions I’d heard of the cotton, he’d have a hissy fit for sure.
Downs rubbed his chin. “I talked with some of the experts at MAT. There’s a new chemical, a pesticide. I’d like to give it a try. See if I can’t salvage something.”
Peyton’s jaw flexed. “I wish I could say yes. I honestly do. But finding the cause of an illness comes first.”
Downs rattled the ice in his glass. “They didn’t catch what they’ve got from cotton or weevils. That’s crazy talk that’ll get folks stirred up and make trouble like you’ve never thought about.” He leaned forward. “It sounds like something Luther and Janks cooked up to scare people. Fact is, I wouldn’t put it past Janks to be the one who sent Lester that new cotton seed.”
This was a lead to pursue. “We’ve been curious about the cotton on the Carlisle place. It’s . . . unusual.” If Peyton wanted to yield the details, he could. Again, he kept silent.
Leaning a boney elbow on a knee, Downs thought a moment. “Lester told me something about the seed, but I don’t clearly remember the whole story. Take it up with Luther Carlisle. He’s involved. You can count on it.”
“Thanks.” It was a solid tip.
“Listen here, you two. MAT has worked that land for a long time. If there’s something sick about it, someone brought it and put it there and it wasn’t Lester.”
He unfolded from the chair. “Call me when I can see that land.”
Downs hadn’t been gone a minute when Bonnie Louise pushed through the door. She wore scrubs and a lab coat and looked as if she hadn’t slept in a week. “Peyton, I need your help.” She acknowledged me with a look. “Dr. Unger believes the mold comes from the weevils. He’s not sure of the source, but this is a big step. He wants us to gather more specimens from the field.”
Peyton stood quickly. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, yeah, Sarah Booth, Coleman asked me to call you an hour ago and tell you Cece left the Jackson hospital. She should be here in Zinnia any minute. Sorry, I got busy and forgot to call.”
A little advance notice would have been nice. To prepare Tinkie for Cece’s condition. “I’ll get that suit later,” I told Peyton.
“Sure thing.” He locked the door behind the three of us as we hurried out of the building.
I walked across the potholed parking lot and driveway to the hospital’s back doors. They were supposed to lock automatically, but that wasn’t the case. Some enterprising family member of a sick person or a hospital employee sneaking out for a smoke break often disabled the lock with a bobby pin. When I tugged lightly, the door opened wide. Folks had been working that stunt since Aunt Loulane was in the hospital fifteen years ago.
I approached the hallway where Tinkie sat on the edge of the cot, slumped with fatigue.
In my year back in Sunflower County, I’d rarely seen Tinkie less than perfectly turned out. She wasn’t a woman who wore her feelings on her sleeve. Somewhere in the Daddy’s Girl rulebook, there’s something about how neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor emotional and physical exhaustion shall ever interfere with looking good.
Tinkie’s clothes were flawless; it was her body that needed ironing. In the week of Oscar’s illness, her muscle, bone, and skin had shifted. That realization scared me into action.
“Tinkie, you have to get out of here for a while.” I came from behind and startled her so badly, she jumped up.
Using her own momentum, I spun her and marched her down the hall. “You’re going home. We’ll pick up Chablis and Sweetie. Maybe I’ll cook something.”
“French toast? Sans the Mickey, right?”
“Cut me some slack. You need to sleep, but I won’t drug you again. And you can have breakfast or dinner, what ever you want.” Where had the day gone—it was mighty close to supper time. “Eat something and if you can’t sleep, I’ll bring you back here. I’ll call your mom to come sit while we’re gone.”
“You promise?”
“Scout’s honor.” I wanted to get her outside in the sunlight to tell her about Cece. I made the arrangements with Mrs. Bellcase as we walked down the corridor.
“What’s wrong?” Tinkie asked, when I held the back door open.
“I have some bad news.” We crossed the parking lot, and then I told her about Cece. All expression fell from her face, and she scuffed her toe in the gravel like a first grader.
“Tinkie, are you okay?”
“Is she seriously hurt?”
She didn’t resist when I opened the passenger door and put her in the car. I slid behind the wheel before I answered. When I was buckled in, I took a deep breath. “It must be pr
etty bad. Harold went to facilitate transferring her here. They’ll be here soon.”
“And Coleman doesn’t have any more details than that?”
“Coleman has his hands full, Tink. There’s been a murder.” I filled her in on what I knew of Lester Ballard’s death.
“I don’t want to go home. Let’s stop by the sheriff’s office,” Tinkie said.
“You look like a puff of wind could blow you away. You need something to eat and some time with your dog.”
“I need to find out what’s happening to the people I love.” The quiet tone of her voice made me hesitate. Tinkie was in bad shape, but she wasn’t a lightweight when it came to friendship. Cece was as big a part of her life as mine.
We sat in the roadster at the edge of the health clinic parking lot while I decided which way to go.
Tinkie grasped my wrist and squeezed. “I’ve been helpless, sitting there with Oscar. I need to do something. Maybe I can help figure out who hurt Cece.”
And that was all it took. I pressed the gas and headed to the court house. While Tinkie needed rest and food, she also needed to get involved in something outside Oscar’s illness.
19
Dahlia House was out of the way, but I ran by to pick up the dogs. Tinkie needed the comfort of her hound, even if her canine was a dustmop that looked more like a stuffed toy than a real dog. Chablis was tiny, cute, and had the heart of a lioness. She could give Tinkie what I could not—the sense that her family was still complete.
“I’ll be back with the dogs in a flash,” I told Tinkie as I hopped out of the roadster. Tinkie didn’t look as if she had the strength to climb the stairs to Dahlia House.
I entered the front door and stopped. Cigar smoke curled in the light from the front windows.
Someone had been smoking in my home. And cigars! I didn’t know anyone who smoked those things.
“Put your hands in the air.” The voice was cold and menacing. I complied, my mind jumping backward to Cece and her beating and ahead to Tinkie and what a weakened target she would be if I failed to handle this.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Turn around.”
I was reluctant to face my attacker. Most criminals preferred not to leave eyewitnesses alive.
“Do it. Now.”
I moved slowly. The man standing in the shadows of the parlor wore a pin-striped suit, a hat, and held a machine gun. Though his fedora concealed his features, I could see a thin mustache that emphasized the narrowness of his lips. He was slender, and the cock of his hat told me he was bold.
I’d never seen him before.
“Where are the dogs?” Concern for Sweetie Pie and Chablis made me step forward.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. Beneath the harshness of his words was something else, an echo of another statement . . . another voice.
I studied him, noting the slender frame and the tiny little curl of a smile.
“Damn it to hell and back, Jitty. You scared me.” I dropped my hands. “Now I need to change my pants. I hope you’re happy.”
Instead of the chuckle I expected, Jitty only tipped up the brim of her hat, revealing her luminous eyes. There was sadness there, not humor.
“Did you know John Dillinger was a hero to a lot of people in America? They cheered him on in his robberies.”
Now it was a history quiz? “Give me a break.” I filtered through the little bit I knew of 1930s gangsters. “He was viewed as a Robin Hood of hard times. He robbed banks and shot cops. Except to my knowledge he never gave a dime to the poor.”
Jitty shrugged. “J. Edgar Hoover wore a dress.”
I rolled my eyes. “What is this about? Tinkie is in the car. Cece has been severely beaten. Coleman is fishing a dead man out of the Mississippi. Oscar is still sick—what’s your obsession with outlaws gunned down by the FBI?”
“Times were different when John Dillinger was on the loose.”
“Your point is?” I had good cause to act brusque. The chance to make things right was slipping away from me hour by hour.
“Wanted posters of Dillinger were everywhere, but hardly anybody recognized him on the street. Folks didn’t expect to see a bank robber passin’ by on the sidewalk. No television to show his mug. No Internet. No cell phones. None of the things that make life so dang complicated today.”
Doggie toenails scrabbled on the hardwood floor as Sweetie and Chablis launched themselves through the swinging kitchen door and rushed me. I patted and stroked, but Jitty was trying to tell me something. Jitty never actually helped me with a case, but sometimes she helped me with a much bigger problem—me.
“Okay, Dillinger remained on the loose for a long time. I’ll give you that. And some folks did protect him. Willingly.” That summed up my knowledge of the outlaw.
Jitty stubbed out her cigar in a leaded-glass ashtray. Had I committed such a violation of Delaney antiques, she would have badgered me for weeks. “The FBI shot and killed Dillinger in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago. It was a Sunday, July 22, 1934.”
Jitty had lived—or haunted—through most of this; far be it from me to argue with her. “Fascinating. But why should I care right now?”
“The FBI knew Dillinger would be in that theater.”
Something niggled at the back of my brain. A betrayal. A huge one. “A woman called the FBI, right?”
“Bingo!” Jitty laid the old-fashioned tommy gun on the table beside the sofa. The prop department in the Great Beyond could obviously furnish anything.
She continued talking. “Ana Cumpanas, her married name was Ana Sage, was the madam of a brothel. She’s the one fingered Dillinger to the FBI. She told them the theater, the time, the film, and she even went to the movie with Dillinger and his latest girlfriend.”
A factoid floated to the surface of my brain. “She wore a red dress. That’s how the feds identified him.”
“Actually, it was orange, but in the lights of the theater’s marquee, it looked red. He was shot in a nearby alley. Some folks dispute as to whether he ever even pulled his gun.”
“Okay, so how does all of this apply to me?”
“Ana believed she’d be deported to Romania if she failed to deliver Dillinger to the FBI. She came over from Romania and had some run-ins with the Indiana law. The FBI supposedly promised her the deportation action against her would be dropped.”
This was going to have a bad ending.
Jitty brought out a cigar from the inside pocket of her elegant suit jacket and twirled it between her fingers. “She was deported in late April 1936. The only thing she got out of her betrayal was a portion of the reward money for Dillinger. Five grand.”
“So the moral of the story is never trust a madam in a red dress.” I had hoped to make her laugh, but not so.
She started to fade, but I could still hear her. “Think about it, Sarah Booth. Trust is the issue.”
“Jitty, what are you telling me? Should I trust or not? Will I be betrayed by someone in a red dress?”
Even though I listened for nearly a full minute, there was no answer. Like Elvis, Jitty had left the building.
I was left with one more puzzle to study on top of the pile I already had.
Tinkie cuddled Chablis to her chest as we rode through the cool April evening. Sweetie Pie sat in the backseat and occasionally leaned over to slurp Tinkie’s neck or cheek. The top was down on the roadster, and the wind whipped a bit of color into Tinkie’s face, but the fine lines and wrinkles that hadn’t been there a week before testified to the stress she was under.
Though the plan had been to go to the court house, by the time I got into town, Tinkie had fallen asleep.
I shook her shoulder lightly. “Tink, I’m taking you home.” Besides, I wanted to check out Cece before she saw the damage done to our friend.
When she didn’t argue, I knew how exhausted she was. “If I find something, I’ll fetch you,” I promised her. “The best thing you can do is slee
p.”
She was so far gone, she didn’t acknowledge me. With Chablis and Sweetie keeping me company, I drove to the big house on the hill that Tinkie called home.
By the time Tinkie was settled on the sofa with Sweetie Pie beside her and Chablis curled in the nook of her arm, she was sound asleep. A quick call to the sheriff’s office garnered the information that Cece had arrived at the hospital. From Dewayne’s voice, I could tell things were dire.
Fighting images of what I was likely to discover, I parked in the hospital lot beside the Sunflower County sheriff’s car. As I marched toward the door, I struggled to weave some plausible story from all that had happened. But there was no connective tissue—that I could see. Turning the pieces every which way, I couldn’t make them lock together.
While the Carlisle land was presumed to be the source of the disease or infection or mold that had leveled Oscar, Gordon, and the two realtors, no one had proven it.
The boll weevils—and the strange genetically altered cotton—were an added twist. Was this some form of agri-terrorism? But why Mississippi and why a crop like cotton with no application for use in weapons or the drug trade?
Jimmy Janks was a viable contender for prime suspect, but he wasn’t alone. Luther and Erin Carlisle, despite Erin saying she wouldn’t sell the land for development, both stood to profit if the plantation was sold for premium development dollars.
And thrown in the middle of the Carlisle family intrigues was Sonya Kessler. Was she truly a half sister willing to sit outside the warmth of the fire while Luther and Erin divided the spoils?
Also connected to the Carlisle land was Lester Ballard, shot to death and his body dumped in the Mississippi. He’d been supposed to meet with Janks.
Add to that the attack on Cece—while allegedly on a date with Janks—and none of it made sense.
Speaking of Janks, what was his connection to Lana Carlisle? Why would he visit her grave across the state in West Point?
Like a web spreading wider and wider, the facts had one central source—the Carlisle plantation. In some way, everyone connected back there.
Greedy Bones Page 16
