by Katy Munger
"You believe that?" I asked. "Do you really think the cops are on the right track? Have you even been reading the newspapers?"
Her gaze was defiant. "I have faith in the police. And no, I haven't had time to read the papers. I've been a little upset, know what I mean?"
"You seem real broken up," I said dryly.
"You don't know how she feels," her roommate interrupted angrily. "She's been crying herself to sleep for days. Now go away and leave us alone." She was mad, and fury lent her strength. This time she succeeded in slamming the door shut and nearly took off my big toe in the process.
"I'll just slip my card under the door," I hollered calmly through the heavy wooden panel, acutely aware that other doors were opening up and down the hall so the residents could get a better peek. Didn't anyone ever go to class around here? I slipped my card under the crack of the door and a shadow passed over the sliver of light as someone reached to pluck it from the rug.
"Can't you at least give me the names of some of his friends?" I asked her. Silence.
"Call me if you want to talk to me," I said. I was greeted with more silence and left.
Bobby was on the phone when I returned to the office and ignored me completely. Even more unusual, he was ignoring the double cheeseburger sitting on the corner of his desk. Perhaps he was on to something big. That made one of us.
I started off with a phone call to Mary Lee's secretary, demanding a call back from Her Majesty as soon as possible. We had to straighten a few matters out.
Next I booted up my customized snoop computer program and searched all the local North Carolina telephone directories for the names of everyone who had been in the Order of the Golden Fleece with Thornton Mitchell. I got three hits in the Raleigh area and ten more statewide. Three hours later, I had spoken by telephone with the spouses of most of the out-of-towners, contacted several at work, been hung up on twice, and unearthed exactly zippo that might help. I was saving the locals for last. Of the three in the Raleigh area, one did not answer, one claimed to be the wrong Hubert Pupkins, and the last was a woman who answered the phone in a high, trembling voice. I recognized the tone immediately. The dear lady had been drinking all afternoon, probably with no one but a faithful dog for company. All of the spouses I had reached had sounded a little lost and a whole lot lonely. This one sounded lonelier than most.
"Hello?" she quavered. "Mrs. Alice Hampton Mackie speaking."
I explained who I was and why I was calling. Older people often got nervous when they heard I was a private dick. It makes them feel less than respectable. This one just wanted someone to talk to.
"Oh, yes," she said in a slurred Southern drawl. "Harry and I have been talking about poor old Thorny all week. It's just terrible to die that way and to be stuffed in some stranger's car. I was so depressed just thinking about it."
"Did you know Thorny in college?" I asked. Hey, I knew him as well as anyone by now.
"Oh, yes." she said. "Quite well. He and my husband Harry were both in the Order of the Golden Fleece. My daughters attended UNC as well. We don't have any sons." She admitted this sadly, as if she had failed poor Harry in not producing a future generation of Golden Fleecers.
"Are you busy this afternoon?" I asked. "Could I talk to you in person, Mrs. Mackie?" My theory is that you can't be too respectful of your elders when you are sucking up to them for badly needed information.
"Of course. I'm not busy at all," she said eagerly. "Do come right over." I felt a little ashamed that she sounded instantly cheered at the prospect of company. I reminded myself that I was not exactly hustling a lonely old lady for secrets. I was just doing my job. I wrote down the directions to her house and hung up. The phone rang almost immediately and I grabbed at it, anxious to be on my way.
"Yeah?" I grumbled, hoping it wasn't Bill Butler and a new lecture.
"It's me," Mary Lee announced. "What do you want? What's so important? I suppose you spent the day prying through my life at UNC?" Her voice was strained. I guessed the campaign was not going well.
"I went there to pry into Thornton Mitchell's life, not yours," I reminded her. Had she always been this megalomaniac or was she getting worse?
"What did you find out?" she asked in a tight voice.
"I found out that Lee is your maiden name," I said. "Why didn't you tell me that in the beginning? You're related to Ramsey Lee, aren't you?"
There was a short silence. "Is that all you're calling about?" she asked and laughed. "He's my first cousin. So what? I have about five hundred first cousins. I thought you knew. Some detective you are."
I let out a deep breath. "I want to talk to him again. Set it up."
"What makes you think I can get him to agree to see you?" she asked.
"Gee," I said. "Maybe it's because you make Hitler look wishy washy."
Good god if her laugh didn't sound pleased at the comparison. "I'll see what I can do." She hung up. I couldn't wait to return the favor one day. I flew out the door, anxious to interview Mrs. Alice Hampton Mackie before she sobered up.
I needn't have rushed. Mrs. Alice Hampton Mackie would not be sobering up for some time. She sat in a white wicker armchair surrounded by framed family photographs, steadily downing a pitcher of gin and tonics while we talked. I had declined the offer of a drink. Something about her dignified tipsiness made me want to stay sober.
"Thorny was a dear boy," she said after she had warmed up by probing my family origins and quickly switching to a more tactful fifteen-minute monologue about her garden. "He was one of those boys who preferred to stay behind the scenes and let someone else take the spotlight. He knew everyone on campus who counted, though. And he always had lots and lots of money to spend. He enjoyed flashing it around, you know. It was sort of sweet. He had no idea he was being gauche."
"His family had money?" I asked.
"Oh, no. Thorny's family was as poor as church mice. He was just good at making money in different ways. I never understood any of it. I was just a silly girl bade then. All I cared about was the football brunches or whether my daddy would buy me the car I wanted. That sort of thing. It was a lovely time." She sighed. "My husband Harry was so handsome back then. He still had his hair."
"How about Thorny?" I asked. "Was he a lady’s man? He seems to have been rather, um, popular as he got older."
A disapproving frown crossed her face. "That was just foolishness brought on by middle-age. My own Harry went through the same thing but I told him I would stand by him and never divorce him. He grew out of it. I think maybe poor old Thorny was just making up for the past,'' she continued dreamily. "He was always shy with the girls back then. Tried to use his money to impress us, but he wasn't very good at it. He was never terribly good-looking and always a little overweight. Looks really count in college, you know. When Addy Poole agreed to marry him, we were all surprised. I didn't say so, naturally, but I thought Addy could have done better."
So did I. "Was Addy his girlfriend all through college?" I asked.
"Oh, no." She shook her head and the ice cubes rattled forlornly in her empty glass. "Thorny didn't start going out with Addy until his senior year."
"Did he have a girlfriend before that?"
"Not exactly," she explained carefully. "He was just crazy about Sandy Jackson, but she was from money and went to Duke and wouldn't have a thing to do with him." She paused for a moment. "At least, not after a few dates she wouldn't. But they became good friends and when that unfortunate business happened, Thorny was very helpful to her."
It was what I had been waiting for and it made the entire afternoon of wasted phone calls worth it. "Sandra Douglas Jackson?" I asked. "Senator Boyd Jackson's sister?"
The old lady nodded brightly. "Yes, that's the one. She didn't go to school with us. They wouldn't let women attend UNC until their junior year back then, you know, unless they were pharmacy students. She was a Duke girl. But they all came over to Chapel Hill looking for beaus. Those Duke boys could be so serious. They
just weren't any fun. Her and her brother Boyd both went to Duke. How their daddy paid for it, I can't imagine. I believe he was a well-to-do peanut farmer, but still. Duke is so expensive."
"What was that about an unfortunate situation?" I asked her.
Mrs. Mackie's face flushed a deep pink. "Unfortunate only in the sense that Sandy didn't finish her senior year. She moved to South Carolina for a while. Got married and didn't come back for quite some time."
If I knew my 50's euphemisms, that meant that Sandy Jackson had gotten knocked up her senior year, had a shotgun wedding, and been packed away to distant relatives until the baby was born.
"You're talking about Stoney Maloney's mother?" I confirmed. "She left school to marry Stoney's father?"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Mackie said, nodding her head vigorously and looking with longing at the by now empty pitcher. "She was definitely married when Stoney was born. Everyone knows that. But she gave up school. That's why she pushed her brother so hard. She was a brilliant student, but left with just a year to go. She is making up for lost opportunity, you see, that's why she may seem a little bit pushy about her son's career."
"Who did she run away with?" I asked. "What was his name?"
"Why, Albert Maloney," Mrs. Mackie said. "Everyone knows that. He was someone the rest of us hardly knew. I believe he was in my zoology class, or maybe it was biology. But I can't think how Sandy even met him. We were all quite surprised when the two of them turned up missing. None of us ever saw Albert again after that since he wasn't really in our circle. And we didn't hear about Sandy again for another ten or so years, not until her brother began running for office and we all noticed that she was being quite a help to him. That didn't surprise us. She is the brains in that family."
"Is Albert Maloney still alive?" I asked. "I heard he was killed in a war or something."
"Killed in a war?" Mrs. Mackie laughed, transforming her face into one of lost beauty. "Albert would never have been in a war. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He was a quiet boy, more quiet than Thorny. No, he is still quite alive. I believe my husband Harry told me that he lives somewhere on the Outer Banks. He has a charter boat business. He's a very lonely man, Albert is. Always was. He likes to be alone. I can't imagine why." She said it with the conviction of someone who knows. "I don't think he even sees his son and everyone knows he's going to be the next senator from North Carolina."
"I don't understand how everyone could know this family's history and me not have read a word about it in the press," I complained.
"My dear," Mrs. Mackie said, patting my hand soothingly. "Of course you haven't read about it. This is not Washington, D.C., you know. We have better things to do than point the finger at others. The Jacksons are a fine North Carolina family and Stoney is a good boy. None of us can afford to throw stones and none of us wants to get started. Anyone who has ever lived in North Carolina knows that there are things that you can discuss in private but would never mention in public. It's just not done."
Had I been from North Carolina originally, her voice implied, or from a little more money, or maybe a slightly better family, I would surely have understood. But she didn't mean it unkindly and I didn't take it as such. Instead, I thanked her for the information and stood up.
"Oh," she said. "You're not going to stay for dinner? My husband Harry called and won't be able to make it. I've made a ham and fresh biscuits. I was hoping that you might join me."
I had plenty to do. And I could have used an evening at the bar. But Mrs. Alice Hampton Mackie was a nice woman and the house was so quiet you could hear the grandfather clock tick. Besides, I've always loved fresh baked ham. What the hell. It wouldn't kill me to stay and eat. It was the least I could do. She had helped me. Why not return the favor?
Chapter Ten
It rained hard that night. I know because I sat up late and watched the downpour knock the red and yellow leaves from the trees in my side yard. By morning, they would be bare and part of autumn would be gone. The thought depressed me. So did thinking about Mrs. Alice Hampton Mackie. So did everything about the case, come to think of it, not to mention the fact that I was alone and sober enough to hate it.
What was really bothering me was the fact that Stoney Maloney could very well be a big fat liar. I wanted to believe he was real. But someone, somewhere wasn't telling the truth. There was definitely a connection between Thornton Mitchell and Stoney's family —perhaps the most important link of all. Why would Thornton Mitchell and Sandy Jackson be close friends in college and then spend the rest of their lives avoiding one another? And why would Albert Maloney abandon a highly successful son to spend his days ferrying drunken fishermen around the Atlantic? The only thing I could figure out was that Albert Maloney wasn't Stoney's father at all. Which left Thornton Mitchell as the leading candidate.
This was truly a repulsive thought. Had Mitchell threatened to blackmail Stoney by revealing his status unless Stoney agreed to grant him special favors once he was in office? Would it have made any difference to the voters if they had known who Stoney's father really was? It was a possibility. Stoney's strongest support was among the moral right. They didn't like anything that smacked of someone else having had more fun than they had. But I didn't like the theory. There is such a thing as genetics, as numerous pitiful specimens of my own dying family tree could attest. If ever two people looked different, it was Stoney Maloney and Thornton Mitchell.
On the other hand, it made sense. Sandy Jackson gets pregnant. It's the fifties and she's in danger of disgrace. Mitchell won't marry her. So she finds a man who will—Albert Maloney—and they lie low for a couple of years before they part. The experience makes Sandy Jackson and Thornton Mitchell lifelong enemies, each kept from revealing the truth for their own selfish reasons. Inevitably, the reasons eventually conflict.
If Stoney knew all this, then he was the big fat liar I feared he might be. Or worse, a possible murderer of downright biblical proportions.
I wanted a drink, but knew it would only depress me more. Besides, the more it rained, the more my apartment seemed to shrink in size. There was only one way to deal with the situation. What I needed was a road trip. I'd find Albert Maloney and ask him myself. If anyone knew the truth, it would be him, but the phone wouldn't do the trick. I'd be harder to ignore if I was standing in front of him and I could also read his face if he tried to lie. I checked my watch. The Outer Banks were about four or five hours away, depending on how fast I could push my Valiant on the deserted highway. If I left immediately, I'd be there before sunrise. If Albert Maloney ran a charter fishing boat business like Alice Mackie seemed to think he did, I might be able to question him before he headed out for the day.
I was pretty sure he'd be around. October is a good month for fishing off the Atlantic Coast. But I didn't want to waste time unless I had to. I called directory assistance in all of the towns along the Outer Banks, starting at the Virginia Border. I found him listed in Nags Head. I phoned the number and a male voice answered on the third ring.
"Hello?" the man mumbled, his voice heavy with sleep. "Who is this? What time is it?"
"Albert Maloney?" I asked.
"Yes?"
I hung up the phone and reached for my car keys.
The rain stopped just outside of Lake Gaston. I rolled down the car windows, letting the cool night air fill the car and sweep away my bad mood. The never-ending strip of black highway calmed me and I began to relax. By the time the sun was inching up over the horizon, I could smell the tang of salt water in the air and my head cleared.
I stopped for coffee and hot biscuits just outside of Nags Head at an empty diner that probably thrived in the summer but was barely kept alive in off-season by the occasional truckers passing through. The woman behind the register was napping with her head down on the steel countertop when I arrived. But the coffee was strong and, better yet, she knew just where the charter boats left the docks.
I followed her instructions and arrived before the sun did, snagging
a parking spot near a long row of cabin cruisers bobbing gently in the quiet waters of the bay. Most of the boats were empty but a few twinkled with lights that winked in the early dawn. Isolated crew members climbed here and there, checking hatches, coiling ropes, and preparing for the morning run. The air was cold and sharp with the smells of tar, brine, and drying fish. Overhead, gulls wheeled in the mist, their sharp cries spoiling the morning quiet like momentary quarrels.
I knew Albert Maloney the minute I saw him walking toward the dock. And I also knew that my trip had been in vain. He was a tall man, trim with huge shoulders and a shock of white hair above a handsome, weatherworn face. Stoney looked just like him. His firm jaw was locked in thought and he did not look up as he passed by me. I waited until he had boarded a large boat near the end of the row before I approached. He was already busy at work on the captain's deck, a small upper platform high above the water where he could spot schools of fish. I was halfway up the ladder before he noticed me.
"Not going out today, miss," he said, dismissing me with a disinterested glance. His voice was clogged, as if he seldom spoke. He returned to calibrating a dial that was blinking neon green numbers. "You better try one of the other fellows down the dock."
He didn't stop me when I joined him on the captain's deck. "Are you Albert Maloney?" I asked.
"Yep," he said suspiciously, unsettling me with his dispassionate gaze. He didn't care what I looked like, I realized, he just wanted to make sure he could take me if I started to cause trouble.
"I'm Casey Jones. I'm a private detective investigating the murder of Thornton Mitchell."
"I read about it. Why do you want to talk to me?" As he buried his hands in his coat pockets, I realized I was cold. The mist was clinging to the backs of my legs like a washcloth. I shivered, wishing I had worn my jeans and a heavier jacket.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I just didn't know where else to turn."
