In the Dreaming Hour

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Lucy left it at that. Even if her dad didn’t know of any lynchings here on the property, that didn’t mean there hadn’t been any. Aldridge could have very easily met his end that way. But she knew of two places that might know – the historical society and the sheriff’s department. As she’d already determined, she wasn’t sure she could get away with asking the historical society about a murder. But the sheriff’s department – well, crime was their business. It might be the better place to start. Besides, she didn’t know anyone at the historical society, but as of last night, she knew someone at the sheriff’s department.

  The plan for the day was starting to shape up.

  “Well,” she said casually, turning away from the window, “maybe I should talk to Aunt Dell at some point before I leave, just to hear what more she has to say. You don’t think she’s making shit up, do you?”

  Bill grinned. “It’s always possible with her,” he said. “That woman tells some pretty tall tales. But she’s also been around a long time, so it’s difficult to know where her tales stop and the truths begin.”

  Lucy reached over to take the will from her father. “Maybe so,” she said. “But she has some good qualities, too. The woman makes some killer coconut cake.”

  “True enough.”

  “Let me go call More Guns now and see if I can get in to see him today.”

  “That’s Mo Guinn.”

  Lucy just giggled, heading out of the bedroom as her father followed. But as she reached the big central hall outside of the bedroom, she came to a halt as Bill continued to the stairs. Lucy’s attention moved to Mamaw’s bedroom door across the landing, her thoughts once again turning to the woman’s letter.

  In the top of my chifforobe is a small wooden box containing a gold locket. Lucy wanted to have a look at that old locket. Making sure her dad went all the way down the stairs, she hurried on into Mamaw’s bedroom.

  Someone had pulled the blinds down last night and the room was dim as sunlight seeped in between the edges of the blinds and the windows. Lucy went to the windows and raised the blinds again, allowing the morning to enter as she turned around to look at the old bed and chifforobe.

  Somehow, the daylight didn’t seem to make this room any more cheerful. It was still a sickroom of an old woman. Quickly, she went to the chifforobe and pulled open the top drawer that was made for jewelry storage.

  Lined with green velvet, there were several cheap pieces of jewelry neatly arranged in the drawer. Plastic pearls and other costume jewelry lined the velvet and Lucy carefully fingered through them, looking for the small wooden box that Mamaw’s letter had described.

  At the back of the drawer were a few small boxes lined up and Lucy pulled the first two out, looking inside to find a cameo in one and a ring in the other. The third box was a little bigger, and made from wood, and when she popped open the sticky top, she was immediately met by a dark gold locket.

  The moment her gaze fell on the jewelry, she felt a sense of awe wash over her. There was also an odd sense of validation, too, as if what her grandmother had been telling her was really the truth. That bittersweet love story that had kept her up all night came flooding back to her as she carefully picked the locket up and inspected the etched gold flowers on the front before turning it over and seeing tiny words inscribed on the back.

  In The Dreaming Hour.

  Lucy stared at those words a moment. It was difficult to describe what she was feeling beyond the awe and the sense of truth. A man who had worked for months to save the money it took to buy this piece of jewelry had been a man who, his entire life, had probably known only degradation and hardship. But in his words, and in this little piece of jewelry, were such dignity and hope. The strength of the human spirit was strong with him.

  Lucy didn’t know Lewis and she never would, but she felt as if through Mamaw she had learned something about this extraordinary man. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

  “Hello, Lewis,” she whispered. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  It was like a secret she shared now, a secret with her and her grandmother and the man who wrote that beautiful poetry. Eighty years later, the secret had been divulged and although some might have seen it as a huge burden, Lucy didn’t. She saw it as an honor.

  And she had a job to do.

  After a moment, she gently kissed the locket and quickly put it back into the box. That box ended up back in the drawer for safe keeping. Telling her parents she was heading out to see Mamaw’s lawyer, she really headed in the opposite direction towards the Tallahatchie County Sheriff’s Office.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ~ Another Night, Another Death ~

  “Did ya’ll see the headlines?”

  The question came from Laveau as he walked into Terhune’s office in the small, brick building in Charleston that served as the sheriff’s office. It was another hot day in a long line of them, the General Electric fans blowing furiously in a vain attempt to stave off the heat. Terhune, bent over his desk as he went over a police report, glanced up when Laveau entered. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he’d meant by that question.

  Quietly, Terhune set his pencil down, got up, and went to close the door to his office. It was too hot to close the door but he had to. For what he had to say, he didn’t want anyone hearing.

  “I saw,” he said as he made his way back to his desk.

  Laveau watched the man as he sat back down and picked up his pencil. He planted himself in a chair, a smile licking at his lips.

  “Ya’ll don’t seem too pleased,” he said.

  Terhune wouldn’t look at him. “It was an unfortunate accident,” he said. “My deputies found that the brakes on the car were bad. That’s what caused the accident.”

  Laveau nodded his head, pleased. “That’s too bad for Haltom,” he said. “Lost his wife and a son. A shame.”

  Terhune sighed heavily but he still wouldn’t look at Laveau. “I’m sure he’ll be much more careful from now on.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Laveau’s smile broke through and he stood up, pulling a handkerchief out to mop the sweat off his forehead. “That’s good,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of the problem, Terhune. Now, some of the boys are going over to the Ragsdales tonight. Thought we needed to have a chat with them folks. They got to know that they can’t go spreading rumors like the ones they were telling Haltom. That kind of thing just gets people in trouble.”

  Terhune knew exactly what he meant. Most of those men were on Laveau’s payroll, anyway, men who worked at Glory or just acted as Laveau’s muscle. He looked at Laveau for the first time since the man entered the room.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” he said, trying to sound firm. “Haltom won’t make any more trouble and I don’t need you going over to that shanty town and creating more trouble. Just let things lie, Mr. Hembree. There’s no need for anything more.”

  Laveau was still smiling as he put his handkerchief back into his pocket. “There won’t be no more trouble,” he said. “We just gonna have a talk with old ’Zeke Ragsdale. He’s the one starting trouble, not me.”

  Terhune stood up. “I’m telling you not to do that,” he said in the closest display of insubordination against Laveau he’d ever shown. “Look, the situation is finished. Haltom won’t talk. But if you go out and do something to ’Zeke Ragsdale, it’s going to get around. People are going to talk and word is going to spread. And if they come up from the state capital to investigate something, I’m not sure I can keep you out of it. No need to stir up the hornets once they’ve all been put back in the nest, Mr. Hembree. Do you get my meaning?”

  Laveau stood next to the door, his hand on the latch. The smile on his lips had turned into something of a grimace. He didn’t like what Terhune was saying.

  “I can take care of them boys,” he said quietly.

  Terhune lifted his eyebrows. “Can you take care of the whole state?” he shot back quietly
. “Because that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t let this lie. The law is going to catch up with you at some point and I won’t be able to stop it.”

  Laveau’s smile was completely gone by that point. With a lingering glare at Terhune, he jerked open the office door and stormed out, leaving the door to slam back on its hinges. Terhune could see him from where he sat, watching as Laveau left the building completely. Only when the door was shut did Terhune let out a pent-up sigh, sinking back in his chair as if his entire body had deflated.

  He just knew there was going to be trouble.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Present

  The Tallahatchie County Sheriff’s Office was located in the small town of Charleston, a town, like most southern towns, that was built up around a central square with a Confederate statue in the middle of it. It was a cute little town, with its Five-and-Dime store, an old-fashioned soda fountain, and a variety of other small stores that surrounded the well-kept square.

  The sheriff’s office was off the square on a side street. The headquarters was a one-story brick building that took up a good portion of the block. It was quite old, but as Lucy noticed when she parked her car next to it, it was in seemingly good repair with a secured yard and quite a few surveillance cameras all around. There was some money invested in it, unlike the rest of the shabby county.

  Climbing out of her rental car, Lucy pulled her big Louis Vuitton bag out with her. The journal was still in there, as was Mamaw’s letter. She was never going to let those two things out of her sight, ever, and she made her way up the sidewalk towards the front entrance of the station with that big bag hiked up on her shoulder.

  All the while, she was fighting down a serious case of nerves, hoping that she was doing the right thing by going to Beau Meade. He’d seemed sympathetic enough the night before, but who knew what he really thought about the whole Hembree-Meade relationship. It was just possible he’d apologized for it only because his dad had been around, but Lucy didn’t think so. She was really hoping to find some help from him for what she needed to do because the truth was that she didn’t have many other alternatives.

  So, she wandered into the vanilla-looking lobby of the station; pleather chairs, vinyl tile, and little else. On one wall, there was a window covered with bulletproof glass and a talk box with a clerk on the other side of it. Lucy walked up to the window and focused on the clerk inside, working. The woman didn’t notice her. She took a business card out of the side pocket of her purse and cleared her throat politely.

  “Hi,” she said, watching the pretty African American woman look up at her. “I don’t have an appointment but I was hoping to see Sheriff Meade. My name is Lucy Bondurant.”

  She put her business card up against the glass so the clerk could see it. It was an impressive card that usually opened doors, but Lucy wasn’t sure that would work down here. They didn’t care if she was a lawyer from Los Angeles who made three times what the police chief made. The clerk peered at it.

  “Does the sheriff know you, ma’am?” the clerk asked.

  Lucy nodded. “He does,” she said. “I won’t take much of his time, but this is a personal matter. I’m sorry, but I can’t disclose the nature of it.”

  The clerk’s gaze lingered on the card, then on Lucy for a moment, before picking up the phone. She turned her head away as she spoke into the receiver and Lucy took her card down, stepping back from the glass. She figured she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting in to see Sheriff Meade so she turned away from the glass after a moment, pretending to look at the décor of the room as she waited for the clerk to finish her call. It didn’t take too long, in fact. Soon enough, the clerk was hailing her through the talk box.

  “The sheriff went out this morning and hasn’t come back yet,” she said. “Do you want to wait?”

  Lucy pondered the question. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  The clerk shook her head. “He had to go to Tutwiler, ma’am,” she said. “His secretary isn’t sure when he’ll return.”

  Lucy didn’t want to hang around the station all day. Her time was limited. “That’s okay,” she said, going to the glass again. “Can I leave my card for him?”

  The clerk opened up a fortified drawer beneath the window, like the ones used by banks, and Lucy slipped her card into it. Thanking the clerk, she headed back outside.

  It was a bright day, more humid than the day before, and she was coming to regret wearing jeans. Cute jeans, nonetheless, but too heavy for the weather. She was thinking about going back to her hotel and changing before she headed over to see Mo Guinn when she caught sight of a black unmarked Ford Edge heading back to the yard. She just caught it out of her periphery, not paying any attention to it, until someone yelled at her.

  “Hey!”

  She turned to see that Beau had pulled up alongside her. He was in the middle of the street, looking over at her with both pleasure and surprise. Lucy definitely saw the pleasure part and her heart leaped, just a bit. She was pleased to see him, too.

  “Hey yourself,” she said with a grin, coming off the curb and walking out into the street where he’d stopped his car. “What a coincidence – I was just coming to see you.”

  He flashed a smile. “Really?” he said, suddenly looking at his reflection in the rear view mirror. “Damn. I wish I’d combed my hair.”

  She laughed softly. “You look fine.”

  “I should have brushed my teeth, too.”

  “That’s just gross.”

  He laughed because she did. “I’m kidding,” he said, his gaze moving over her but trying to pretend like it wasn’t. “What can I do for you that you’d drive all the way over here?”

  Lucy’s smile faded. “Well,” she said, “it’s kind of complicated. I need help and I didn’t know who to turn to, so I thought I’d ask you.”

  He nodded his head. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

  “No,” she lied.

  He motioned to her. “Get in.”

  She did, and off they went.

  * * *

  “I don’t even know where to begin with this.”

  Lucy sat opposite Beau in the front window of a diner at the edge of town. They’d just ordered two massive breakfasts and she had no idea how she was going to eat any more food, but it didn’t matter. She had Beau’s attention and she actually felt quite emotional about what she was about to say to him. She’d been planning her speech all the way over to Charleston but now that the moment was here, her courage wavered – was she doing the right thing? Second thoughts pulled at her.

  “Start at the beginning,” Beau said as the waitress brought them two big cups of strong coffee. “Tell me what brings you all the way over to Charleston.”

  Lucy waited until the waitress wandered away. “It’s funny,” she said, puffing out her cheeks in a gesture of determination. “I had it all laid out, what I wanted to say, and now it’s just not coming to me. I’m usually much more articulate than this.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “You’re one of the most articulate people I’ve ever seen. You must be hell in a courtroom.”

  She grinned. “How would you know that?”

  He poured sugar into his coffee. “It’s my job to be a trained observer,” he said. “You and I had a good conversation last night. I can tell that you’re a woman who says what she means.”

  That statement bolstered her courage. “That’s true,” she said. Then, she took a deep breath. “Okay, so here goes – our families have a history together, as we figured out last night. I think that really links you and me more than if I’d just met a cousin I never knew about. There’s some kind of weird bond between the Hembree and Meade families that defies explanation. Do you get that sense, too?”

  He sipped at his coffee. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve always gotten that sense.”

  “Like our families are partners in crime.”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like.”


  She watched him stir his coffee to cool it down. “I don’t want to say we’re family, but it’s almost like that.”

  He nodded. “I never thought of it that way, but you’re right. We share a lot of the same history.”

  More hesitation from Lucy. “Well, here goes,” she finally said. “Up until last night, I didn’t know you from Adam. But I have to find out a few things and that means I have to trust you. I have to swear you to secrecy on this, Sheriff. Will you do that for me?”

  He nodded. “I will under one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you call me Beau.”

  She gave him a lopsided grin. “I can do that,” she said, thinking he was trying to flirt with her but not wanting to read too much into it. Her smile faded. “This is something really heavy to lay on you and you’re probably going to run screaming from this place and never talk to me again, but I need answers and I feel like you’re the one who can help me find them. You’ve grown up here and you know this area and the legends about it, and I really don’t feel as if I can turn to anyone else. I need to pick your brain.”

  “So pick.”

  Lucy chewed her lip in thought a moment. She was still clearly hesitant. Then, she opened up her purse. Carefully, she pulled forth Victory’s journal and set it on the table beside her. She put her hand on it as she spoke.

  “Yesterday, at Mamaw’s funeral, I was approached by the woman who took care of my grandmother in her last days,” she said quietly. “The woman told me that my grandmother had written a letter to me and that I wasn’t to let my dad see it. In fact, I’m probably not to let anyone see it but I’m going to show it to you because the answers I need result from this letter she left me. I can’t tell you how much this letter means to me or how personal it is, so please… you never saw this, okay?”

  Beau was looking at her seriously. “Of course.”

  Silently, Lucy opened the journal and removed the old envelope from the inside flap. Very carefully, she pulled out the letter, opened it, and handed it over to Beau. He took it with equal care, and maybe some confusion, as he pulled out a pair of readers from his uniform pocket and put them on.