Dark of the Moon

by Parrish, PJ

  “Go,” he said softly. He let go of her wrists and took a step back.

  “Go,” he repeated.

  She stood there for a moment, her hair haloed by the lights. Then she turned and was gone. From inside the mansion came the sound of laughter, floating above the carols.

  Chapter 9

  Louis adjusted his sunglasses and tried to concentrate on the road as he drove. But his head was clouded with the scent of lilacs and the lingering taste of Abby’s kiss.

  It had been a kiss sugared with the candor of a child. But beneath it was the spice of a woman’s yearning. He knew he had done the right thing by stopping it. Despite her appearance, Abby was too young, and the last thing he needed right now was her infatuation. He hadn’t imagined that look of abhorrence on Max Lillihouse’s face, and he knew he needed to pay attention to what Dodie had said in the bar about forgetting where he was. He had a job to do. And getting involved with someone like Abby Lillihouse would be more than a distraction. It could be downright dangerous.

  But still…he couldn’t get the picture of her coming down the stairs in that green dress out of his head. He sighed. Keep it level, Kincaid, keep it level.

  He tried to reach the coffee cup in its console holder. “Hey, Junior…”

  The lump in the passenger seat grunted sleepily.

  “Hand me my coffee, will you?”

  With an exaggerated sigh, Junior sat up, popped the lid off the coffee and handed it to Louis. Louis took a sip, watching the road through the steam rising from the coffee.

  “Where are we?” Junior said, squinting out at the bright morning sun.

  “Coming up on some place called Bovina. Which exit should I take?”

  “Vicksburg ain’t got but two.” Junior lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “I don’t know why I had to come. I hate long drives. I don’t get overtime for this, you know.”

  Louis frowned. “Open the damn window.”

  Junior did, and the smoke snaked out. “And I don’t know why we had to go all the way to Vicksburg to see this guy,” Junior went on.

  “I told you. He’s an expert. I’m hoping he can tell me something about the medallion.”

  “Yeah, right. Where’d you find him, Louis, in the Yellow Pages under ‘Civil War’?” Junior laughed at his own joke.

  Louis glanced at his watch. Vicksburg was six hours round-trip from Black Pool, which is why he had dragged Junior out at seven in the morning. He wanted to be back early enough to stop off at the Black Pool Library. It would be closed tomorrow until after New Year’s and he wanted to try to track down the poem in the book found with the bones. He knew it was a huge long shot, but he had no other leads.

  “Sheriff know we’re goin’?” Junior asked.

  “Yes, Junior. I would think the sheriff knows damn near everything I do.”

  “Did he chew your ass for goin’ to see Miz Lillihouse?”

  “Yeah, he took a bite or two.” Louis pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and tossed it in Junior’s lap. “Look at those directions and tell me where to get off.”

  “If you need my help to get off, then you got some fuckin’ problems that I can’t even begin to help you with!” Junior cackled again.

  “Just tell me which damn exit to take.”

  “This here one.” Junior settled back against the door, frowning. “Goddamn, Louis, you got no sense of humor.”

  Zachary Taylor’s home was located just outside the graceful old river town of Vicksburg, at the top of a steep, green hill.. Taylor was a descendant of the former president and had earned a reputation as an expert on Civil War-era relics. Louis had found him by calling the Vicksburg Historical Society.

  As they pulled up to the house, Louis had the feeling of stepping back to the 1800s. It was an elegant, flagstone mansion surrounded by an iron fence. A brick path curled from the gate to the massive wooden door, shaded by evergreens and pines. They were greeted by a housekeeper who led them silently to a study.

  The study was paneled in blackened oak with hand-carved window frames set off with lace valances. Impressive leather furniture sat on glazed hardwood floors. But Louis was drawn to the dozens of paintings and black-and-white photographs that crowded the walls. Slaves picking cotton, patrician men on sleek black horses, pale women in hoop-skirted gowns lounging on verandas, black women staring out from ramshackle porches. A Confederate battlefield littered with dead, a battalion of black soldiers leading an assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, Lincoln riding in a carriage to his inauguration. Family, wealth, poverty, despair, victory, horror, hope. It was all there on Zachary Taylor’s walls.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Zachary Taylor strutted into the room, sticking out a stiff arm in a friendly greeting. Taylor himself looked as if he were locked in a time warp. He had a tiny silver goatee and mustache and wore a natty smoking jacket of Scottish plaid. “How was your trip?”

  “Long,” Junior said, standing near the door.

  Louis pumped Taylor’s hand. “It was fine, sir. Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

  “No bother at all. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

  “This is quite a room,” Louis said. “It must have taken you a long time to amass a collection like this.”

  “And lots of bucks, too, eh?” Junior added.

  “My grandfather was a Union captain,” Taylor said, “who fell in love with a Southern lady named Annabelle Pierce. She wouldn’t leave her home, so he settled here. I was twelve when I found his diary among some old things. That got me started.” He smiled. “Then I discovered the attic. My mother’s family built this home in 1789 and two centuries of history were stored up in this attic. I used to be a teacher, but I’m retired now.” He spread his arms wide. “This is what I do now.”

  “Quite a hobby,” Louis commented.

  “It’s no hobby, Mr. Kincaid, it’s my life.” He pulled at his goatee. “Now, let’s see what you have,” he said eagerly.

  Louis pulled out the medallion. “I’ve been told it was made in the 1800s.”

  Taylor took the medallion out of its plastic bag and went to his desk. “Interesting,” he murmured as he examined it under a jeweler’s glass. “Is this the only piece you have?”

  “What do you mean?” Louis asked.

  “This is part of a collection, you know.”

  Louis came over to the desk. “A collection?”

  “Three pieces—with a ring and a bracelet. Wealthy families had them made by silversmiths as kind of a substitute for a family crest. The medallion and ring were worn by the man of the house for such affairs as weddings and funerals. The woman wore the bracelet. Each one was unique as each family designed its own. They were worth hundreds of dollars at the time. Very expensive for the day.”

  “Were they common?” Louis asked.

  Taylor shook his head. “Only a few hundred were made. I myself have seen only a few pieces and just one complete set.”

  “Can it be traced?”

  Taylor shrugged. “This one is in very poor condition. Where did you find it?”

  “In the ground,” Louis said.

  “On a dead nigger,” Junior added. “No offense, Louis.”

  Taylor spun around and stared at Junior. “You, sir,” he said coolly, “may wait outside.”

  “What?” Junior said.

  “You may wait outside,” Taylor repeated. “The uncouth and ignorant have no place in my home.” He called to someone named Tilly. A large man with arms black as oil and thick as his thighs appeared in the doorway. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that stretched tight across his powerful chest.

  “Tilly, escort this gentleman to the porch. He wishes to wait outside.”

  “Now, wait a minute here—” Junior stammered. He looked over at Louis, expecting him to intervene. Louis merely shrugged. Tilly’s massive hands clamped down on Junior’s shoulder, and Junior twisted away angrily. “I can walk, thank you.”

  When they were alone,
Taylor smiled. “Don’t worry about your friend, Mr. Kincaid, Tilly won’t harm him.” He shook his head. “Frightening, our tolerance of inferior professionals.”

  Louis smiled. “I always thought the community gets the police force it deserves.”

  “Perhaps. Now, back to your article. Your best chance of tracing it would probably be if someone were to recognize it. Perhaps someone in your town may know it.”

  Louis shook his head. “No luck so far. No one’s claiming it.”

  Taylor pursed his lips. “Well, in a way, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why’s that?” Louis asked.

  “Well, let’s just say that owning one of these medallions isn’t exactly something to be proud of.”

  Seeing Louis’s frown, Taylor beckoned him to come closer. “I’ll start at the beginning. See this design in the middle? All the medallions had them and all the designs were different.” Taylor pointed to a cross and a flag. “Except for this, of course. They all had a cross and a Confederate flag.”

  Louis squinted through the glass. “What’s that third thing there?”

  “Ah, that’s what’s interesting. Every medallion featured a third element, unique to itself, and it was meant to represent the family trade. Your medallion here shows a sword, so my guess is this medallion belonged to a family of soldiers.”

  “So the sword represented family, and the flag represented the Confederacy,” Louis said. “Then what did that cross represent?”

  “Segregation,” Taylor said without blinking.

  Louis set the jeweler’s glass down carefully on the desk.

  “But not in the way you might think, Mr. Kincaid,” Taylor said.

  “I don’t know how else you can think of it,” Louis said with a wry smile.

  “In the Old South, in the years before the war, most people thought of segregation as an accepted fact of life. For the wealthy, those who kept slaves, segregation was simply a matter of…well, property.” Taylor pointed at the medallion. “That cross was a symbol of a certain way of life. A symbol, if you will, of a way of thinking about your place in it.” Seeing the look of dismay on Louis’s face, Taylor added, “Some people derive great security from knowing their place in life. Which is why so many Southerners felt so lost after the war…and why some still do.”

  “I suppose,” Louis muttered. “You said the medallion was valuable in its time. So what did you mean when you said it isn’t something to be proud of?”

  “Symbols can change meaning,” Taylor said. “The swastika was an ancient Sanskrit symbol that meant ‘auspicious’ before the Nazis corrupted it.” Taylor raised his hand in a V-fingered salute. “This meant ‘victory’ in war before the hippies changed it to ‘peace’.”

  He picked up the medallion. “After the war, these fell out of favor. I think people just packed them away in trunks and tried to forget them. But early in this century, a curious thing happened. They started to surface again, worn again by rich men, but men who were different from the original owners, men who saw a different symbolism in them.”

  Taylor looked directly at Louis. “You see, these men didn’t understand the old traditions and the reasons behind them. These were men who aspired to the gentility of the Old South but who were, at heart, simple racists.”

  Taylor rubbed a finger over the medallion’s crest. “These became a sort of perverse symbol of a new brotherhood, like a secret handshake or some arcane ritual. To those who understood its significance, owning one of these was as meaningful as putting on a white robe—but more socially acceptable.”

  Taylor held out the medallion. Louis took it, looking down at the tarnished silver. “If you were looking for its owner, where would you start?” Louis asked.

  Taylor hesitated. “I would start with an old family, one with historical pedigree. Look for a family with a political background, maybe wealth. But keep in mind, Mr. Kincaid, that the piece could have been stolen during the war or long after. It may be very far from its original owner. Probably is.” Taylor smiled. “I’d be glad to take it off your hands. Give you a fair price.”

  “It’s not mine, Mr. Taylor.”

  Taylor nodded. “I’d guess that it didn’t belong to your victim, either.”

  Unless he had stolen it, Louis thought. Is that why he was killed, because he had stolen a necklace? Louis’s eyes drifted up to the photograph of the slaves in the field. What a stupid thing to die for—a piece of tarnished silver.

  Abigail swung her yellow Firebird into the parking lot of the library and turned off the ignition. She sat motionless, a heaviness pressing down on her, making any movement, even the simple act of breathing, difficult.

  The parking lot was almost deserted and it was very quiet. But she could still hear the cries. She shut her eyes. And she could still see her mother’s face. Her hands, gripping the steering wheel, began to shake.

  It had started about one in the morning, right after the last guest had left the party. She had heard her father’s voice echoing in the foyer downstairs, yelling at the maid to get out. Then a crash, as a tray of glasses fell somewhere in the house. Then more shouting, her father’s voice thundering through the house as he called to Grace. “Mama! Goddammit, where the hell are you?”

  He had found her sitting in the dark library.

  Abby shut her eyes tighter as a hot flush of shame washed over her. Why hadn’t she gone down there when she first heard her mother’s cries? Why had she just huddled there in her bed like a coward as her father hit her mother? Oh, God, why didn’t she do something?

  A deep shudder shook Abby’s body and she leaned her forehead against the wheel. No…Why didn’t she do anything? Why didn’t her mother do something to defend herself? Why did she let him hit her?

  Hot, silent tears flowed down Abby’s face. The hurt was back, oozing up to the surface, like blood from a wound that had never healed. The memories came back, memories of hiding under her bed as a child, listening to the breaking glass, the shouting profanity and her mother’s cries. She could remember the makeup and long sleeves her mother wore to hide the marks and bruises, the stories she told to friends, putting up a face to the world that everything was all right. Her mother was so good at covering up, so good that Abby was almost able to pretend along with her. And then, as the years passed and the beatings lessened, Abby began to believe that everything really was all right. He still drank heavily, especially on holidays, but at least the beatings had stopped.

  Then, last night happened. What had triggered the beating last night? The hurt was back, and with it, the old anger she felt toward her mother for letting it happen again. Why? Why? Why? It was the one word she kept coming back to. Why did she let him treat her like that? What was wrong with her?

  This morning, her mother had not come down for breakfast. When Abby knocked at the bedroom door, Grace’s tremulous voice came to her, telling her not to worry, that she just had a headache. Abby had tried the door but it was locked, and she had known it was to keep more than just her father out. Elaborate lies, long sleeves, and locked doors. Even Abby was not allowed in.

  Slowly Abby raised her head and opened her eyes. “Oh, Mama,” she whispered. “Why?”

  Abby stared out the windshield of the car. She had come to the library partly as an excuse to get out of the house. She had often come here when she was younger, whenever things got bad at home, losing herself in picture books of foreign countries. Such simple tricks of escape no longer worked, but the old library still felt like a refuge.

  Abby looked down at the textbooks on the seat. School was her escape now, as far away as she had been able to manage. Her father had dismissed her need to go out of state as a silly notion, but she had stood her ground. She had escaped, temporarily. But the seed of defiance still hadn’t grown into any real confidence. Her father talked often of how he expected his “Doll Baby” to come back home after graduation, settle down and marry some nice local boy. Abby gathered up the books and got out of the car. Bein
g home this week had made her realize that she was, in her own way, still as much a prisoner as her mother was.

  The library was quiet, only a handful of people bent over books or roaming the aisles. Mrs. Jenkins, the elderly librarian, greeted Abby as she came in. Abby smiled and waved a hand in acknowledgement. She had known Mrs. Jenkins since she was nine, finding solace in her warmth just as she had always found her escape in the library. Mrs. Jenkins always seemed to know when something was wrong at home and often invited Abby into her office for cookies and tea. But today, Abby just couldn’t face the sweet old woman. She went quickly to a table and slipped her knapsack off her shoulder. When she looked up, she spotted a familiar face across the room.

  Louis was sitting at the first table, his head bent over a book. She stood there, the sting over her rejected kiss still fresh. As if he felt her eyes on him, Louis looked up in her direction.

  His gaze was steady but he didn’t smile. She forced herself to walk to him with a determined step. She took the chair across from him, meeting his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she said under her breath, “I won’t do anything to embarrass you.” She gave him a tentative smile.

  Louis closed his book and smiled back. “More studying?” he asked, nodding at the textbooks. He thought about bringing up last night, but it was probably best to stay on neutral ground.

  Abby nodded. “I’ve got a term paper due in philosophy.” She cocked her head to read the title of the thick book Louis had been reading. “Poetry?” she said.

  “I’m looking for a specific poem,” he said, “something to do with the case.”

  “Oh.”

  Louis studied her face. She looked pale and tired. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. He hoped it wasn’t over what had happened between them—or not happened. Maybe he should bring up last night.

  “Abby,” he asked, “is something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong.” She smiled again, but it had a false brightness. “You know,” she said, “maybe I can help you. Find your poem, I mean. I’m majoring in English lit.”