“Remember, everything I have is hearsay. No proof. I’m not even sure you could get anyone to confirm it.”
“Understood.” I leaned forward and rested an elbow on the arm of the wingback. “I’ve been gathering information from a lot of sources. Some of it is starting to dovetail together. For instance, I’ve been told that the Pattons pretty much ran the town during those days, with the sheriff’s help.”
“A fact most people know. The Pattons and the Taylors controlled, in one way or another, most of the major businesses in town.”
I blinked. Twice. “The Taylors?”
He nodded, then used his hands to demonstrate the layout of the square. “Think about it. The Taylors had the drugstore on the corner—here—and the medical clinic just down the block. Those were the Taylor strongholds. Russell ran the drugstore, and his son, Andrew—our current Doc Taylor—ran the clinic until he took over the drugstore from his father. Across the side street was the bank—owned by the Pattons—and the street ended at the courthouse. So you had this square of buildings—bank, drugstore, courthouse—that all faced each other. Between the drugstore and the clinic was the hardware store—which belonged to the Walker family—and Roscoe Carver’s appliance sales and repair shop.”
“So how were the Pattons and Taylors connected?” I still had problems envisioning Doc Taylor as a crime syndicate boss.
“Like any good crime family. Marriage. Russell’s sister Tess worked at the bank and married old Abner Patton, the patriarch. They had a girl, who died from polio in 1952, and two boys, Chris and our current mayor, Ellis. They lost two more boys in infancy, between Chris and Ellis. My mother said Abner wasn’t a bad man until after his babies died, especially the little girl. After that, he turned sullen and mean. Really did a number on his surviving boys. Almost as if he blamed them for surviving.
“Then after your grandmother showed up, Tess put two and two together and packed her things and left. I guess around 1955. She’s not been heard from since.”
I scowled. “And she didn’t take her boys?”
Hal hesitated, thoughtful. “No. I guess that’s a little odd.”
“Especially for 1955. Did he remarry?”
Betsy nodded. “Pretty quick, come to think of it. Young thing, worked at the bank. Didn’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
Something nagged at the back of my mind, but I shook my head to clear it. “I’ll think about that later.” I looked at Hal. “Please go on.”
“Well, that made it all worse, and by the late sixties, you couldn’t turn your back on Abner without getting bit. But way before that, he and Russell had teamed up with a guy named Buck Dickson out of Fort Payne to run moonshine into Pineville and all the surrounding counties. Buck had the connections with the bootleggers out of East Tennessee, and he’d been running ’shine into Birmingham and Montgomery. Abner and Russell had the rural connections, as well as enough law enforcement on the hook to spread into the small towns in a six-county area.
“As Alabama passed more open liquor laws, they started smuggling other items, eventually turning to counterfeit money. Money laundering had always been a part of it, and that expanded. Buck had avoided getting involved with the Dixie Mafia for decades, then gave in with the money laundering. Drug and theft money would come in, and Abner and Russell would funnel it through the local businesses, pass it through the bank, and send it on to Birmingham, scrubbed fresh and clean.
“It appeared to be the perfect setup. If the feds got wind of it, they’d planned to throw it back on the businesses. This would leave the bank, and the core of the group, in the clear. If a business wouldn’t cooperate, Abner had no qualms about burning it down. Some folks just vanished in the middle of the night. Enough of your family goes missing, you start to toe the line.”
“Why not leave?”
Hal shifted again, pain etched in his face. “Most families here are rooted deep. Would you leave if it meant death to your cousin second removed? Or your husband’s elderly aunt?”
“People felt trapped.”
“Unmistakably.”
“It sounds like a sweet deal for the core group. So what happened?”
A slow smile crossed his face. “Roscoe Carver happened.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Birmingham, Alabama, 1984
ROSCOE HAD PRAYED all his life, but he hadn’t prayed this hard since Vietnam. Prayed that Abner Patton and his goons would ignore Imajean, who he’d sent—along with his parents—to live with his aunt and her preacher husband. He knew that they’d protect her with their lives, and he prayed fervently they wouldn’t have to.
Maybelle’s sister in Mississippi had taken her and Jeshua in, and Roscoe prayed that she’d find a way to forgive him, forgive that his actions had taken her baby from her. One of the bullets that had killed Juanita had passed through her and hit the little one. But the last time he’d seen his sister-in-law, Maybelle hadn’t even looked at him. She hadn’t done much of anything actually. She’d just sat and stared. Shocked. Catatonic. Another thing he hadn’t experienced since Vietnam.
Then again, he doubted he’d be able to forgive himself for all of this. His chest constantly felt tight, his heart crushed. His ache ran deep, and not just from the broken ribs, smashed left knee, and deep contusions. Also from the high cost of trying to stay on the right side of things. Was it worth it? Their lives would have certainly been more peaceful if he had just gone along and did what everyone else was doing.
But Roscoe had had enough of that. Enough of watching his father do it during the Jim Crow days. Of doing it himself in the military, jumping any time a slick-haired lieutenant right off the boat ordered men into terrifying danger. Enough.
Roscoe looked around the shed where he waited. He found a five-gallon bucket, upended it, and eased down on it, using his crutches to slow his descent. His uncle’s sister-in-law’s nephew by marriage ran a gas station on the north edge of Birmingham, a tidy place catering to the black community. Roscoe had shuttered his store and had been sleeping in the shed behind the gas station for a couple of days, to get out of the harsh light of Pineville. Quite a downfall from the pleasant and open house he and Juanita had bought. But infinitely safer. He’d take the smells of gas, oil, and kerosene over that of gunshots any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Everyone, it seemed, knew what happened. The old man, Abner, had made sure, wanting the whole town to know what happened when he was crossed. The community was still reeling from the accident, the deaths of Chris and William, along with Dean’s injuries. Most of the Secret Service agents who’d been trying to stop the big rig had been caught up in it as well. Four agent deaths and a lot of injuries. The accident site, two counties away, now swarmed with federal investigators. Everyone knew they’d be heading for Pineville next. And when he’d returned from the hospital, everyone had stared at him as if he’d personally driven that eighteen-wheeler off US Highway 11 into a ravine. Pineville despised him.
Roscoe heard a low, well-tuned motor pull behind the gas station. Tires passed from pavement to gravel, then the engine shut off. Roscoe used one of his crutches to push open the shed door. Bobby and Alex entered, their faces somber.
“Roscoe, I’m sorry.” Bobby’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Thank you.” He gestured around the shed. “Pull up a bucket and have a seat.” The request had the desired effect—they relaxed and found their own makeshift seats.
“Is the rest of your family safe?” Alex asked.
Roscoe sat straighter, pressing one hand against his broken ribs. His torso was wrapped, but the dull pain remained, making it hard to breathe. “They are, at least for now. Besides, the old man has more on his mind right now.”
“Such as?” Bobby leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees.
“They think that the devils of hell are going to descend on Pineville.” He gestured at Alex. “Aka the Secret Service.”
“That’s pretty much what’s about t
o happen,” Alex responded. “The accident investigation has the focus right now, and a second team is busily tearing up a couple of locations in eastern Tennessee. They’d hoped to find the printing plates, but they didn’t turn up. They do have a line on the printer who was running them, so they may be there.”
“Somebody who Buck Dickson had under his thumb from his moonshining days?” Roscoe had heard enough from William to know that the methods the old man used to control Pineville weren’t isolated—and that Abner Patton had learned a lot from Buck Dickson.
“Pretty much. They’ll be raided tonight. Do you have any other information?”
“I do. But not about that.” Roscoe shifted his left leg to ease the pull on the cast and put all his focus on Bobby.
Bobby caught the move and straightened. “What? You found out about my mother?”
Roscoe inhaled deeply and released it slowly. “My father came to see me in the hospital. This attack destroyed him, almost as much as William’s death. He begged me to tell him how it all started.”
“And did you?”
Roscoe nodded. “I told him it all came down to the time the girl with the daisy came to town. He broke down, then he told me what he knew. Confirmed what I had seen in the woods that day when I was hunting.”
Bobby stiffened. “Who?”
Roscoe looked from Alex to Bobby. “Tess Patton killed your mother.”
Bobby stared at Roscoe, his mouth opening slowly. His voice cracked. “Tess? Abner’s wife?”
Roscoe gave a slow nod. “I didn’t believe it either, especially after what I heard in the woods that day. But I got it wrong. Turns out that your mother went to the Patton home that night to confront Abner. He wasn’t home. Tess listened to her, then lost it, probably fed up and more furious at Abner’s cheating than at your mother. Chris was in his bedroom and heard the fight. But he didn’t get there in time. By the time he got downstairs, your mother was dead.”
Bobby whispered, “I can’t believe it.”
“Chris is the one who dumped the body, trying to cover it up. To protect Tess. Dr. Taylor, Andrew Taylor, helped. They were going to dump her in the creek at the end of my father’s field road, set him up as the killer, but Daddy was up too early, before dawn, working in the barn with the livestock. They were afraid he’d see their truck coming and going. So they left her for us to find, hoping the Klan would do the rest. It was the doc’s idea to pose her like that gal in California. Realized too late that was their mistake.”
Alex frowned. “Why was that a mistake?”
“My father’s illiterate. Everyone in town knows it. No way he’d ever have heard of the Black Dahlia, much less read enough about it to copy it. Once the Pine Grove Baptist preacher got that detail in his craw, my father wouldn’t be blamed by anyone in town. JoeLee had to step in, make it all go away.”
Bobby swallowed hard, then scrubbed his face with his hands. “What else? I want all of it.”
Roscoe hesitated, but they had come this far. “Chris and William became friends toward the end. Chris trusted him, especially as his old man started pushing Chris out of the operation. One night when Chris was nine sheets to the wind on his own moonshine, he told William about the murder, that he’d intercepted letters between Daisy Doe and his father. Chris and Andrew had been best friends in 1954. They’d been in the drugstore that day she showed up, and Chris knew immediately who she was. Daddy watched them follow her out of the drugstore. Apparently they followed her to the motel, thought she’d stay there.”
“And he didn’t say anything to anyone?” Outrage touched the edge of Bobby’s voice.
Roscoe glared at Bobby. “In 1954? The Jim Crow South? They hadn’t lynched anyone in Alabama for eleven years at that point, but my daddy wasn’t about to test that. He wasn’t a brave man—he was a survivor! A family man. Besides, who would he tell? JoeLee Wilkes? The man whose very existence and fortune depended on the Pattons and Taylors?”
Bobby looked away, a bright wetness reflecting in his eyes as his head turned. Roscoe relented. “Bobby, these men slaughter anyone who crosses them. Your mother didn’t stand a chance—even if Tess hadn’t killed her, they would have. I don’t doubt that for a second. And if they had known my father had watched them follow her, he would have been just as dead.”
Bobby cleared his throat. “I know that.”
“Did you know that Tess disappeared a year or so later?”
Alex made guttural sound deep in his throat. Bobby glanced at him. “Disappeared?”
“The old man told everyone she’d run off with a lover. No one would have doubted him. Six months later, he divorced her and married a bank teller, the same one who helped him with the money laundering.”
Silence settled in the shed for a few moments, then Roscoe looked at Alex. “What now?”
Alex rolled his shoulders. “You said they’re expecting us.”
“To the point that you’ll probably find nothing left.”
“They’re destroying evidence?”
“As fast and furious as they can. Did you expect any less?”
“Not really. We may have miscalculated how much we needed the Tennessee-based information. We knew the cash originated there. We expected to find as much as we needed for the Alabama operation in the truck. We saw Pineville as a stop-off, a place the money came and went, not the base of the operation. That lay with Buck Dickson.”
“Probably not too far off, to be honest,” Roscoe muttered. “As far as the core of things lay. You had no idea how mean these men are or how willing to kill they are.”
“You saw Patton’s men shoot your wife?”
“No. But Maybelle did.”
“Would she testify?”
Roscoe shrugged. “Right now she’s in shock.”
Alex stood. “We’ll start there. We can pick him up tonight.”
“I thought you were just counterfeiting.”
“We can make arrests for other crimes if we need to, especially if in connection with a crime under our normal purview. Juanita was killed as part of an ongoing conspiracy involving counterfeiting and smuggling.”
Roscoe used the crutches to stand. “And if you find any of their books, probably tax evasion.”
A slow smile spread over Alex’s face. “You know this for sure?”
“The Pattons and Taylors both squirrelled money away. I can promise you that.”
Alex glanced at Bobby. “Let’s go. I want to call in backup before we head down there.”
Roscoe watched the two men leave, listened to their car back out and pull away. The night felt soft and muggy as he settled back on the cot. This part of Birmingham fell almost as silent as the farm at night, since it was primarily residential. The nightspots were a few miles away, and only the echoes from Interstate 65 disturbed the quiet. A dog barked, and Roscoe could hear a child squealing with glee. He should rest, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Alex was acting too quickly, without regard to what could actually happen.
“Wait for your backup, Alex. Please.”
Lying back on his pillow, Roscoe stared up at the shed’s ceiling and went back to praying. Hard.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Pineville, Alabama, Present Day
THE BELL OVER the front entrance chimed. All four of us froze as Mike Luinetti’s baritone echoed off the high ceiling.
“Ahoy, the museum! Anyone home?”
Betsy twisted on the sofa to face Hal, her eyes wide. “No! He couldn’t have known!”
Claudia hopped up from her desk. “I’ll take care of this.” She left the office, pulling the door closed behind her.
Betsy’s alarm escalated. “Your car is not here. We brought you in through the back at the crack of dawn!”
Hal looked down at his hands, slowly shaking his head. “I should have known. Ellis Patton has eyes all over this town.”
I stood up. “Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”
Hal looked up at me, and his shoulders droo
ped. “I wanted to talk to you. I insisted Betsy make it happen. This is not your fault.”
“What is not my fault?”
The office door opened, and Mike Luinetti filled the door. Claudia bounced up on her toes, trying to peer around him, mouthing, I’m sorry. Mike looked from me to Betsy to Hal, and he seemed to sag against the frame. “Hello, Hal. I hoped it wasn’t true.”
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Mike glanced at me, but his focus was on Hal as he stepped into the room. “Please stand up. Harold Raymond Prentiss, you’re under arrest for tax evasion, illegal sale of a firearm, and evading arrest. And I ought to cite you for putting these ladies at risk for harboring a fugitive.”
Hal pushed to his feet, and I resisted the urge to help him. Instead, I backed away as Mike turned Hal around and placed cuffs on his wrists.
“Grab my cane, would you, Michael?”
“Sure.” Mike picked up the cane and tucked it under one arm as he escorted Hal from the room, matching his pace to the older man’s.
Betsy and Claudia followed them, rocking up on their toes with each step. Betsy seemed the most frantic, occasionally tugging on Mike’s arm. “Michael, please don’t do this!”
They paused at the door, and Mike looked from one sister to the other. “You two need to realize what kind of trouble you could be in if anyone could prove you knew where he was before this. Now, let this go, and let it play out through the system.” His gaze shifted to me. “I’ve released the trailer. You can take it anytime. And please take care of them.” He nodded at the sisters.
“I will.”
He led Hal out, reading him his rights as they went. I stopped Betsy and Claudia at the door, although Betsy tried to push by me. I blocked her with a hand on the doorframe. “Listen to him. Let this go for now. Do you know if Hal has an attorney?”
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