Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “About the Jodi Lockworth case,” she continued.

  I cut her off. “I don’t have anything to trade. Shouldn’t you have this conversation with the police? Detective Waraday, for instance?”

  Chelsea made a face. “Come on! You’re living in the house she lived in. After what happened in Vernon, I can’t imagine that you’d let that interesting detail go without at least being curious.”

  I set the box down carefully, thinking what an odd contrast we were. We probably looked like “before” and “after” makeover pictures. With my hair caught up in a droopy ponytail and scuffed tennis shoes and denim jacket, I’d definitely be the “before” picture. “Sure, I was curious. Who wouldn’t be? But that doesn’t mean I’m asking questions or trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Of course you are,” Chelsea said. “Everyone in North Dawkins is trying to figure out what happened. You’re just a little more persistent than most people and you have access to her house and the people close to her. I saw you chatting with Nita Lockworth and I heard you’ve been helping her out.” Chelsea’s gaze switched to the box and she looked like she wanted to rip the top off.

  I propped my feet on it. “All that’s true, but I really don’t know anything that would help you out.” But even as I said it, I thought that if she knew something that would help with finding Jodi, it would be worth it to talk to her. I was at the point that I was willing to try anything so I could stop jumping at each sound and worrying that someone was trying to break into our house each time the wind rattled the window screens.

  Chelsea ignored me. “Okay, I’ll go first. William Nash’s hyoid bone wasn’t broken.”

  “Hyoid?” I frowned at her.

  “God! Don’t you watch CSI? Hyoid bone. It’s in the throat and when someone is hanged it breaks.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Chelsea’s lips curled. “Even though Detective Waraday has been less than forthcoming, I have some contacts in the GBI.”

  “The Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” I said thoughtfully. “So that means the lynching story isn’t true.”

  The pleased look faded from her face. “I don’t know. It’s still possible he was the victim of racial violence, but just not hanged. There were also multiple rib fractures, a broken femur, and a wrist fracture.”

  “Wow.” We were both quiet for a moment. “That’s…pretty severe.”

  “I know.” Her somber tone matched mine. “I assume you’ve heard what Sherry Wayne has said about Coleman May?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve been doing a little research on him. Except for practically giving away property, I can’t find anything on him.”

  “Giving away property?”

  “Yep.” She reached down and pulled some papers out of the side pocket of a leather computer bag. “He owns seven pieces of property around North Dawkins, most of them rentals as well as two undeveloped lots in your neighborhood and his current house. He also owned two other houses, but sold those cheap, years ago.” She handed me the papers and I flipped through them. “That’s all the public records on him,” she said with a sigh.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Public records can be a gold mine of information. Unfortunately, they haven’t been too helpful here.”

  I stared at the addresses of the properties Coleman had sold. 123 Clifton Avenue and 5296 Sanders Road. “Sanders Road. Where’s that?”

  “South of town. Not much out there, but why he’d sell that low, I don’t know. I’ve talked to a few people about the market around here and he could have sold that for much more, if he’d held out.”

  “Maybe he needed the money,” I said thoughtfully, making a mental note to look up the addresses when I got home.

  “Know anything else about Coleman?”

  “Not much.” I handed the papers back. I was surprised. She was doing her homework on the story. My opinion of her edged up a notch. She’d been fair with me and had actually told me a few things I hadn’t known. I decided I’d tell her what I’d found out, so far. Little that it was, I didn’t see how it could hurt. “All of this is strictly off the record.”

  She nodded and I raised my eyebrows.

  “Off the record, I got it,” she repeated.

  “Well, everyone I talk to says Coleman wouldn’t have hurt Nash. Says he’s not the type to go for violence. Apparently, he’ll talk about how much he doesn’t like African-Americans, but he wouldn’t actually do anything to harm someone.”

  Chelsea said, “Sure.”

  “I know. Everyone is adamant on that point, though. His ex-daughter-in-law called him meek.”

  “I’ve heard you found Jodi’s diary.”

  I laughed. “I wish. We might have some answers if I’d found her diary. I found her reporter’s notebook. It was in shorthand, her own version, so Nita had to translate it.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” Chelsea’s eyes widened. “A notebook in code.”

  “This is still off the record. When Jodi’s found you can use it.”

  Reluctantly, she said, “Okay. It’s going to make such a good story. Do you still have it?”

  “No! I gave it to Detective Waraday.”

  “So, what did it say?” she asked eagerly.

  “It was notes on her stories, interviews, a couple of possible story ideas, that sort of stuff. It did mention Nash. Have you researched the lynching?” I asked, hoping to distract her from asking any more notebook questions.

  “Yes, and I haven’t found much, which I suppose isn’t that odd. It would be something people would want to cover up. I haven’t been able to track down anyone who’ll admit they were there.”

  “Speaking of rumors, how did everyone hear about Jodi supposedly returning before her mother’s birthday?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That one was weird. We were all camped out at the sheriff’s office, waiting for any news on Nash, when Skip packed up and got out of there fast. He hardly ever moves fast, so I knew something was up. I followed him. Later, I found out he got a tip with the story and your address.”

  “He was specifically given my address?”

  “Yes. I guess the person with the tip thought they’d better spread the word. By the time he got to your house, there were three other reporters arriving besides me.”

  Chelsea’s phone rang as I noticed the other mom and little girl were leaving the park. It was nap time anyway and there’s never a better time to leave than when a playmate leaves. I quickly called to Livvy that it was time to go. Chelsea clicked her phone off. “The divers have arrived to search the lake. I’ve got to get out there. We’ll talk again soon.”

  I was surprised to find Mitch at home when I arrived.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as I came inside, carrying Nathan on one hip and lugging the remnants of our picnic in my other hand.

  “Well, that’s some welcome,” he teased. “Can’t I come home in the middle of the day for no reason?”

  “You’re never home in the middle of the day for no reason.”

  “I can think of a few good reasons to be home in the middle of the day,” Mitch said with a slow smile.

  “Right. What’s really going on?”

  “Crew rest. I have an early flight tomorrow.”

  Livvy barreled past me. “Dad’s home! Dad’s home!”

  He squeezed her into a hug and looked at me over her head. “That’s the kind of greeting I like. How’s my girl?”

  “Good!” Livvy shouted. She wiggled free and raced off down the hall, postponing the inevitable. She knew nap time was near and she often disappeared right before. Her strategy was to stay clear of me because then I couldn’t tell her to go to her room for her quiet time.

  I went to Mitch and kissed him. “How’s that?”

  “Better.”

  “I’m glad to see you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really glad,” I said, and kissed him again. “Crooner got in four mor
e chairs. I saw them on my way home. If I hurry, they’ll still be there. I’ll get them while Nathan’s napping.”

  Mitch followed me into Nathan’s room. Nathan hung limp in my arms. He’d worn himself out at the playground. “You don’t have to worry about the chairs. People can stand up and eat. Happens all the time at parties.”

  As I changed Nathan’s diaper, I said, “Mitch, think about the last party we went to. Were people eating standing up?”

  “No, but that was at my squadron commander’s house. We’re not the squadron commander. We don’t have to have chairs.”

  I snuggled Nathan close for a few seconds before putting him in his bed. “Face it. We’re not college kids anymore. We’re moving up into the big leagues—parties with chairs instead of only pizza and beer.” I kissed him on the cheek and said, “Back in a flash.”

  The chairs were still there when I wheeled into the gravel parking area a few minutes later. The flags were fluttering in a lazy way as a gentle breeze moved through the air. I made my way through a mishmash of rusted machinery that I couldn’t identify and beat-up display cabinets that had their glass replaced by chicken wire.

  The chairs looked good. They were almost the same color, maybe a little darker stain than the ones I’d already bought, but it was close enough. I heard humming and turned to see Crooner. “Afternoon. I see you spotted the rest of the chairs.”

  “Yes, I did. I’ll take them, as long as they’re the same price.”

  He hesitated for a second, then nodded and said, “Sure. Sure. Let me load ’em up for you.”

  After he’d stowed them in the minivan, I followed him across the lot, his lopsided gait making our progress slow.

  “I met your daughter the other day. She told me how much you helped her with the Peach Blossom. It looks wonderful now.”

  He laughed. “Would’a been a lot less trouble to build a new building, but Kate wouldn’t hear of it.”

  We went inside and he went back to humming quietly as he wrote up the receipt. I wrote another check. If anything, the place looked more cluttered than it had the last time. I briefly considered giving a pitch for my organizing services, but quickly discarded the idea. I had a feeling Crooner would dismiss me out of hand. Kate was probably the person to approach. She might be able to convince him he needed some organizational help.

  When I handed the check over I said, “You know, you never answered my question last time I was here.”

  He grinned as he stamped the back of the check, then slid it into a cash box. “What question was that?”

  “Whether anyone else had been asking about Nash.”

  “Nope, can’t say that I’ve had anyone out here asking after him.”

  Can’t say? Did that mean he hadn’t had anyone asking about it or he wasn’t going to tell me if someone had been around? He handed me the receipt and I folded it in half, then paused as I noticed the address and phone number printed on the bottom.

  “This is 123 Clifton Avenue?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said as he flipped the cash box lid down.

  “That means you bought this property from Coleman May.”

  Crooner slowly pushed the latch down on the box. “Yes.” He turned away and raised his arms a little as he walked, to help him pick up his pace. He braced the screen door open and gestured for me to go first.

  I went slowly down the steps, thoughts tumbling through my mind. Another property south of town sold cheap, too, on Sanders Road. The Peach Blossom was on Sanders Road, I suddenly remembered. I got to the bottom and turned back to look at him. “Coleman May sold this property to you and he sold another house to Kate. Both of them below market value. Far below, from what I understand.” I cocked my head and waited to see what he’d say.

  He shrugged. “He needed to sell.” He angled his stiff leg down the steps as he braced his arm on the banister, then brushed past me and busied himself with straightening one of the tilting flagpoles.

  I glanced at the two houses so close together and thought about the last time I was here and what he’d said then. I hurried over to him. “You said that what happened to Nash was the saddest thing you’d ever seen in your life. What did you see?”

  “I never said I saw anything.”

  “But you used that word, ‘seen.’ If you hadn’t seen something wouldn’t you have used the word ‘heard?’ It was the saddest thing you’d ever heard in your life?”

  He gave the pole one final twist into the ground. “Those are just words. Seen, heard. There’s no difference.” He turned his back and made his way to the screened porch.

  I hurried along behind. “You know about the missing woman, Jodi Lockworth, right? You’ve got to have seen her picture. It looks like she was researching Nash and Coleman. If her disappearance is connected with Nash, you could be the one to help find her.”

  “Her disappearance doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to William Nash.”

  “How do you know?”

  He gripped the handrail and looked back over his shoulder at me. “I just know.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Please, wait,” I said, trying to keep him from going inside the house. “You don’t have to tell me. Just call the sheriff’s office and tell them. Ask for Detective Waraday. If Coleman killed Nash and Jodi was researching Nash, then Coleman would have a reason to make sure Jodi stopped researching. You could be the key to a break in the case. And that’s not even considering what happened to Nash. If you know something about how he died, you could give his family the answers they’re looking for.”

  His gaze wandered over the flags and the sporadic traffic flying by on the state highway. I prayed that a car didn’t turn into the parking area, because if one did, he’d be off in seconds to see if he could make a sale and I could tell he was debating whether or not to tell me something.

  “Fifty years. It’s been over fifty years and Nash’s family still doesn’t know what happened,” I said quietly.

  He swiveled fully toward me and his harsh tone hit me like a physical shove. “You think I don’t know how many years it’s been? You think it was easy to see his mama suffer day after day? She lived right beside us. I saw her every day.” His voice broke and he wiped his hands over his eyes. “Every day.”

  I’d taken an involuntary step back at his angry tone, but with his head bent and his shoulders slumped, he looked harmless enough. I stepped closer and put a hand on his shoulder. “You must have been a kid. How old were you?”

  He stepped back and leaned back against the handrail. His eyes were dry. “Ten. Old enough to know what I saw, but I’m not going to talk to any police about it.” He had a set look on his face. “I’ll tell you and you can tell them.”

  “I don’t think they’ll take my word…”

  “It was late and I was supposed to be asleep, but I was hangin’ out my window. My mama would have tanned my hide if she saw me doing that, but she was always tired, what with working two jobs. I’d go to bed and not ten minutes later, she’d be dozing in her chair. I could pretty much do what I wanted. I’d climbed out of my window and shimmied down the roof over the front porch plenty of times to meet my friends, and I was about to do it again. I was waiting for William to go past. He was fifteen or twenty yards down the road when I spotted him, walking.”

  “Wasn’t that road pretty busy? Why was he out there?”

  “He walked to work every day at the paper factory. It’s only two miles up the road and back then there wasn’t that much traffic. Just had to watch out for the eighteen-wheelers.”

  A four-mile round-trip to get to work and back. I didn’t think there were many teenagers who would do that today.

  Crooner swallowed. He spoke slowly, his gaze fixed on the piles of run-down furniture. “It truly was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, when that car hit him.” His gaze switched to me and he was intense, focused on me. “It was one of those things that you see and then you wonder, just for a second, if
your eyes are playing tricks on you. But that sound of metal hitting flesh and bone, well”—he shook his head—“I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

  Just to be completely clear, I said, “You saw a car hit Nash?”

  “Yes. It was over in a couple of seconds. The car was wavering all over the road, and then it swerved to the right, onto the shoulder, and hit him. Didn’t slow down or nothing. He went up on the hood for a second, then went flying through the air, like someone tossed a rag doll. He landed in the drainage ditch.”

  He stopped and I said, “Then what happened?”

  “The car went on and it was quiet. Real quiet.”

  “Did you recognize the car?”

  “Yep. It was Coleman’s car. Mrs. Ava was driving.”

  “Ava May hit William Nash and drove off?” I repeated, stunned.

  “That’s what happened. I got down there as fast as I could, but there was nothing to be done for him. He was gone. I wasn’t sure what to do. I decided I’d better go home and wake up my mama, but about then, a car came along the highway, driving real slow, and I got out of there. I went backward into the trees and waited.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” His voice was incredulous. “Because I was ten years old and I’d just seen a woman run over my neighbor.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry. It must have been very traumatic.”

  “It was Coleman May in the same car. Mrs. Ava was with him in the passenger seat and she was drunk. I could tell by the way she was slurring her words and sliding down in the seat. She kept saying, ‘I didn’t see him. I didn’t see him,’ but with her words all drawn out. It took Coleman a while, but he finally found Nash. He took something out of the trunk, a sheet or tarp. Something white. He rolled William up in it and lugged it to the car. He put it in the trunk and drove away.”