* * *
They rode out with Teddy in the lead, threading their way along a trail that was more than a deer path but less than a road. The sun flickered through the live oaks, casting dancing shadows that spooked the horses and made them prance and shy. Prudence rode with a tight rein; she’d vetoed a sidesaddle and marveled at the immediate ease with which she’d taken to riding astride. Neither Geoffrey nor Teddy seemed to have noticed that she’d violated yet another rule of ladylike deportment.
Thirty minutes into the live oaks, the track they were following widened into a fork.
“This way,” Teddy signaled, and slowed his horse to a walk.
They’d been right to come as quickly as they had. A man who could only be the Jonah Teddy had spoken of was arguing fiercely with two women who were giving him no quarter. Another man stood off to one side, waiting. He was leaning on a spade.
“I tole ’em, Mister Teddy,” Jonah said, standing his ground while the women glared and muttered beneath their breath. “I tole ’em not to touch nothin’ ’till you got here.”
“Thank you, Jonah.” Teddy swung down easily from his horse as the man with the spade stepped forward to take the reins. “This is Mr. Hunter,” Teddy announced to all and sundry, certain there were others within hearing distance. “He used to be a Pinkerton. You know what that means. He’s a detective.”
“He gonna find out who done this?” one of the women asked. Belligerent doubt and fearful respect warred in her voice and eyes.
“He’ll do everything he can,” Teddy confirmed. “Now you all just stand back and let him see what’s happened here.”
Taking their lead from Teddy, Prudence and Geoffrey dismounted and handed their reins to Jonah and the man with the shovel. Geoffrey nodded politely in the direction of the angry women, then began walking toward Aunt Jessa’s open cabin door, Prudence right behind him. Ten steps from the covered front porch, he stopped.
“What is that?” Prudence asked.
A small cross had been planted in the dirt. Charred and blistered, it had clearly been set afire, burning until the fuel that had doused it was used up or the night dampness extinguished the flames. The cross was no more than two feet tall; it wouldn’t have been a fire big or bright enough to draw anyone’s attention.
“That’s the Klan,” Geoffrey said. “It was banned almost twenty years ago. According to the law, it doesn’t exist anymore.”
“The Enforcement Act of 1871,” Prudence quoted. “Signed by President Ulysses S. Grant. There were three Enforcement Acts all told. My father considered them the most necessary legislation of the Reconstruction period.” She looked down at the blackened cross. “Why is this here if the Klan was eradicated?”
“They went underground,” Geoffrey said. “Most of the Klan disbanded, but a certain number of fanatics are biding their time until the political climate is ripe for them to climb out of their holes.”
Teddy knocked the cross over with one booted foot. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, Geoffrey,” he said apologetically. “I guess you’d call it destroying evidence.”
“It wouldn’t have told us anything we don’t already know. There was a whiff of kerosene, but that was to be expected. The sand is so scuffed up it’s no use looking for footprints. There aren’t any.”
Aunt Jessa was lying in the center of the one-room cabin.
“Stay here by the door,” Geoffrey told Teddy and Prudence. He didn’t wait for an answer, moving swiftly and lightly around the body, spiraling ever closer to the dead woman until he was close enough to kneel down beside her. By then he knew nearly as much about how she died as if he’d been a witness. The blood spatters and the condition of the body told an eloquent story. Her assailant had beaten her unmercifully, probably not stopping until she was dead. There were no wounds of self-defense on her hands, no human skin beneath her nails. Her eyes were wide open, staring at eternity.
When Geoffrey nodded in their direction, Teddy crossed to kneel beside the woman he had cherished in ways outsiders could not understand. He held his hand over her eyes until they stayed closed. Prudence sidled around the bloodstains on the floor to stand beside the bed, studying the rips in the mattress, the way the covers had been flung off. She nudged the mattress up on its side and peered through the netted ropes on which it had rested. Aunt Jessa had been a meticulous housekeeper. There was no dust under her bed.
The cupboards had been emptied, their contents flung to the floor, smashed and scattered. Not a jar lid had been left unscrewed; every box had been upended. A dress, a nightgown, and an apron had been pulled from the nails on which they had hung and tossed into the mess of spilled flour, honey, and rice.
Seashells ready to be strung into necklaces or bracelets lay among round stones painted with the oval that looked like an eye. Faceless, broken dolls would never have their features painted on and hair pasted to their skulls. Bunches of drying herbs Prudence could no longer identify had been pulled down from the low ceiling and stomped underfoot.
The ruined ingredients for Aunt Jessa’s white magic lay all around her.
“This wasn’t a casual killing,” Geoffrey said, standing to survey the damage to the cabin and its occupant’s possessions. “He was searching for something she wasn’t willing to give up. Not even at the cost of her own life.”
“Did he find it?” Prudence asked, trying not to look at the body of the woman who had shown such tenderness toward another victim. “Was it the same person who murdered Eleanor?” Any doubts she’d had about whether Eleanor’s death could have been an accident had dissolved as swiftly as the island’s early morning mists.
“If he had found it, he would have stopped searching. There would be a cupboard left untouched or clothing still hanging on the wall. Something undamaged. No, Prudence, he didn’t find what he came for.”
“Was it the same person who murdered Eleanor?” Teddy repeated Prudence’s question.
“Possibly,” Geoffrey said. “It’s a small island to contain two violent killers.”
“Eleanor wasn’t savagely beaten,” Prudence said. “Her death has the air of premeditation about it.” Both men listened attentively. “She was lured out of her father’s house, somehow made to go to a place she greatly feared, then coldly and callously drowned. That’s not at all the same as what was done to Aunt Jessa.”
“You’re arguing that there are more differences than similarities between the two crimes?” Geoffrey said.
“I’m thinking aloud. Trying to reason my way through two evil acts that make no sense. That’s all.”
“Who would want to kill Eleanor?” Teddy said.
“Exactly,” Prudence agreed. “And who would commit this unspeakable abomination on a helpless old woman? I can’t find a motive for either crime, let alone anything that ties them together.”
“Motive, means, and opportunity,” Geoffrey said. “We need answers to all three if we’re to prove a case.” He looked toward the open door where the two women Jonah had held back were waiting patiently. One carried a bucket, full from the way she held it, the other a handful of rags, a scrub brush, and a bar of strong lye soap. “We’re done here,” he said. “We’ll let you all get on with what you’ve got to do.”
* * *
Aunt Jessa’s grave would be dug in the burial ground beside the small clapboard church constructed by Bradford Island’s ex-slaves and their descendants. Over the years they’d used unpainted scrap lumber when nothing better could be had, and the result was a building that looked and felt humble and welcoming, open to God and the elements through shuttered but paneless windows. Sheltered, some would say hidden, in the live oaks.
Neither the sheriff nor the coroner would be notified of her passing. Or of the crime.
Aunt Jessa’s birth had gone unrecorded except in the slave ledgers of Wildacre Plantation.
Her death was meant to be forgotten.
* * *
“I’m not sure they’ll talk to an off-islander,
” Teddy said.
“They’ll talk to me,” Geoffrey asserted confidently.
“Because you were a Pinkerton?”
“That’s one reason.” He glanced at Prudence, who was following the conversation with an obvious effort to catch and understand what was being left unsaid. “The other is that I’m not a Bennett. They have less reason to hide anything from me.”
“Times haven’t changed as much as Washington would like to think they have,” Teddy said. “I realize that whenever I go away and come back. Sometimes I think life isn’t much different now for some of our people than it was in slavery days . . . except for the buying and selling. The fear is still there.”
“Yet you and Eleanor were planning to live in Savannah eventually, and here on the island.” Prudence thought she’d caught the gist of what Teddy meant. If she applied it to Geoffrey, would it begin to explain what she’d found so baffling about him lately?
“I don’t belong in the North.” Teddy looked off in the distance toward Wildacre and the ocean. “I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable here either now, but it’s the only place where I feel fully alive.”
They’d tethered their horses and gone to stand unobtrusively beneath the low-hanging branches and sweeping Spanish moss of one of the ancient live oaks shading the burial ground where Aunt Jessa’s grave was being dug. The dull thud of spades thrusting into sandy soil reverberated in the stillness. Figures had begun to materialize through the trees. Men, women, and children moving like dignified wraiths toward the clearing. One older man, holding a Bible in his right hand, waited at the church door.
“Here they come,” Teddy said, taking off his hat.
Prudence shaded her eyes with one hand. The light scintillating through the leaves made it difficult to distinguish the approaching cortege.
Six men carried Aunt Jessa’s sheet-wrapped body on their shoulders. There was no coffin. Women dressed head to foot in white accompanied them. They hummed as they walked, barefoot, swaying slightly from side to side. Moments after having emerged from the live oaks, they disappeared into the church. The man holding the Bible nodded in Teddy’s direction, then followed inside.
“That’s Preacher Solomon,” Teddy said, moving out of the shade.
“Is it all right?” Prudence asked hesitantly.
“Did you see him nod at us?”
“That was an invitation to join the service,” Geoffrey explained. He didn’t need to add that without Preacher Solomon’s nod, they would have remained outside. A white man could go anywhere he wanted, but neither Teddy nor Geoffrey would abuse that privilege.
They sat on the backless wooden bench closest to the door. There were no pews as such. The walls of the church had been whitewashed, and a small wood table stood at the front, on it a lit candle and Preacher Solomon’s Bible. Hands upraised, palms facing out, he was leading the small congregation in a hymn that was also a prayer. Deep, soft voices sang and hummed a song so beautiful and melancholy it brought tears to Prudence’s eyes.
No one had looked around when they’d entered.
It was as if they were invisible.
* * *
“Prudence and I will go back to the cabin,” Geoffrey told Teddy when the grave had been filled, tamped down, and covered in a blanket of chalk-white seashells. By the end of the day a wooden marker with Aunt Jessa’s name on it would be placed at the head.
“Will you be able to find your way back to Seapoint?”
“We’ll give the horses their heads. They’ll do the job for us.” Geoffrey held the reins of Prudence’s horse as she mounted, then took something out of his jacket and handed it to Teddy.
“What did you give him?” Prudence asked as they moved off.
“A lock of hair,” Geoffrey answered. “It was in Aunt Jessa’s apron pocket when I searched the body.”
“Was it Eleanor’s?”
“I assume so. Aunt Jessa must have taken it when she dressed her.”
“I wonder why.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say she was planning to make a juju doll for Teddy that would embody Eleanor’s spirit and bring him comfort. But she ran out of time.”
For some reason, although Prudence knew next to nothing about white and black magic, it seemed to make sense. “Why are we going back to the cabin?” she asked. “Didn’t you tell the women with the bucket and rags that they could clean it? There won’t be any clues left.” She was tired and emotionally drained. The cool elegance of Seapoint would have been a welcome relief from the morning’s heartache.
“We’ll sit on Aunt Jessa’s porch and wait,” Geoffrey told her.
“Wait for what?”
“For the people to come and tell us what we need to know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are stories that are crying out to be told, but we won’t learn any of them by asking questions of men and women who have learned that silence is their best defense,” Geoffrey said. “What we’ll do is sit quietly and wait. First one will come, then another. Never two or more together. That way there won’t be any witnesses to what each person has to say. No proof it was ever said.”
“Are they that afraid?”
“You would be, too, Prudence, if you had to live in their skin.”
CHAPTER 10
Jonah was the first to appear.
“What made you come by here this morning?” Geoffrey asked. He kept his eyes fixed on the man’s feet or off to one side so Jonah could watch him while he was talking and judge for himself whether this ex-Pinkerton person could be trusted. No man of color dared look a white person boldly in the eye.
“I come by most ever’ day, suh. Make sure she got kindling wood for the fire. Bring a squirrel or a mess of crabs for the stew pot. Aunt Jessa never did have no chirren of her own to look after her when she put on years.”
“Do you know how old she was?” asked Prudence.
“No, ma’am. She didn’t know her own self. She was already gettin’ on when freedom come.”
“But today you were here earlier than usual. Was there any special reason for that, Jonah?” Geoffrey persisted.
“She ain’t been herself in a long time. Not since last winter.”
“What do you mean? How wasn’t she her normal self?”
“Aunt Jessa never was one to complain. She take the bad with the good and mix’em all up together. Claimed it made life easier that way. But like I said, she changed. Got forgetful, like her mind was always somewhere else. Worked more spells than I ever knowed her do before. But she wouldn’t tell no one what they was for. Then when the young miss got herself drowned in the swamp, it was like Aunt Jessa lost one of her own. She sat in that rockin’ chair of hers with the tears streamin’ down her face like she weren’t never gonna stop cryin’.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“The only thing she said was that she should have seen it comin’. Should have seen it comin’.”
“But you don’t know what she meant?” Geoffrey asked.
“No, suh. But she was takin’ on the blame for it, whatever it was.”
“You still haven’t said why you came over before sunup this morning,” Prudence put in. “Did you hear something that woke you up? A horse moving through the trees, perhaps?”
“No, ma’am, nothing like that,” Jonah hedged. “I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get on with the day and see to what needed to be done.”
“And after you found Aunt Jessa, you went to fetch Mr. Teddy,” Geoffrey prompted. “Why was that?”
“Mr. Teddy was always her favorite. Everybody know she was partial. It was the same when he growed up. She loved that chile to death, and he loved her back.”
“And you thought he’d care,” Prudence said softly.
“Yes, ma’am, I did. I knowed he’d do right by her. If he could.”
“Did Aunt Jessa have anything valuable in her cabin?” Geoffrey asked. “Could Mr. Teddy have given her something that somebody else wo
uld want badly enough to try to rob her? Money, perhaps?”
Jonah shook his head. “Ain’t nobody got two coins to rub together most days. She the same as everyone else. Nothin’ worth stealing.”
“Could she have put a hex on someone?”
“She only do white magic. You gotta go to Queen Lula for the black juju.”
“Can you think of any reason for what happened, Jonah?”
“Aunt Jessa never did have no enemies. She could walk out in the live oaks in the full moonlight and not even the panthers or the wild pigs would bother her.”
“I was thinking of the two-legged variety.”
“None of them neither. Not man nor woman.” Jonah turned to go. “I only got one more thing to say, Mr. Hunter.”
“What is that?”
“This be devil work, suh. As bad as anything I ever seen or heard tell of in slave days. And it don’t get much worse than that.”
* * *
Preacher Solomon spoke in biblical cadences with a solemnity that raised his every utterance above the ordinary. He was older than either Prudence or Geoffrey had at first believed him to be, but it was impossible to pinpoint his age. Like Aunt Jessa, he had been born into slavery and spent most of his life under its yoke. His hands were gnarled and scarred, his face weathered to the consistency of oiled leather, his body lean and sinewy from decades of never having enough to eat. But Preacher Solomon’s eyes were bright and sharp, his teeth white and strong, his mind unclouded by the depredations of time or man.
“Seem like the women got it worse than the men sometimes,” he said, then stopped, shook his head, and gazed off into the distance.
“How can that be?” Prudence asked after nearly a minute had passed with no further explanation. Images of slaves toiling in cotton and rice fields under a broiling sun rolled through her mind. Accounts published by anti-slavery factions, some of them chilling narratives by former slaves themselves, had been widely disseminated in the North. Many of them had found their way into her father’s extensive library.
Preacher Solomon cast a quick glance at Geoffrey, who seemed to hesitate, then nod his permission to go ahead.
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