by Sean Black
With Ty’s hulking frame next to her, Cressida delivered her parting shot.
“Thank you for an interesting evening,” she said, pulling the voice recorder from her bag, and making sure Mimsy could see the red light flashing. “You’ve given me more than I need for my editor to approve me staying down here for as long as it takes. Heck, I might even buy a place. The town could use a little color, don’t you think?”
Mimsy turned her head and stared at them. The look she gave Cressida was chilling. Ty placed a hand on the small of his principal’s back, and shepherded her gently out of the room, into the hallway and toward the front door.
Cressida stopped halfway down the steps and exhaled.
“You okay?” Ty asked. She was shaking, not enough to be noticeable to others, but sufficient that he could feel it.
She nodded. “Fine.”
“You’re just getting the aftermath of the adrenalin dump. That’s what the shaking is. Your body’s readjusting.”
She smiled. “Good to know. I really thought she’d go for me in there.”
Ty didn’t say anything. It had been a possibility.
“You know,” said Cressida, “I think she not only knows what happened, I think she was involved. Really involved.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
They continued down the steps. He kept an eye on the house behind them while also scoping out the open ground around it. Not that he’d be able to see someone if they were skulking in the shrubbery.
That was the thing with places like this. When darkness fell it was all-encompassing. Your only hope of seeing anything was the moon, and tonight it was obscured by grey clouds that had only recently moved in, leaving the air muggy and brooding with the threat of a storm to come.
He walked Cressida to the passenger side, and opened the door, shielding her body with his as she got in.
“So what’s the deal with Timothy French?”
She stared up at him. “I should have told you about that.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Can we get out of here first?”
“Sure,” said Ty.
As he went to close her door, the front door opened. He stopped. Cressida got out of the car as Sue Ann hurried down the porch steps toward them. Every few steps she snuck a look over her shoulder. She was holding two brown-paper bags in her hand. “You never got to eat,” she said handing them over.
“You didn’t put rat poison in them, did you?” said Cressida, sharply.
Sue Ann’s face folded in on itself, her upset impossible to hide.
“I’m sorry,” said Cressida.
“So am I,” said Sue Ann. “I know you have a job to do, both of you, but don’t go judging Darling by Mimsy Murray. There are good people here too.”
Cressida regarded her for a second. “Will they talk to me?”
“I think they will.”
“And what about you?” Cressida asked her.
“Not here, not now. It’s too dangerous,” said Sue Ann, with another furtive glance back to the house.
Mimsy might be watching them from a darkened window and they’d have no way of knowing.
“When you’re gone, I’ll have to live here.”
“You can remain anonymous. I won’t use your name unless you give me permission.”
Sue Ann nodded, her eyes moist. “Let me think about it.”
“You know where to find me,” said Cressida.
“I’d better get back inside,” said Sue Ann, turning toward the porch.
Ty noticed something on the windshield. He lifted the note from under the wiper blade.
It had Cressida’s name on the front. He palmed it to her. “Read it in the car,” he said, as she got back in. He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side, suddenly tired.
He turned on the Honda’s engine and switched the lights on. He pulled away from the house, checking his rearview every few seconds until they reached the end of the driveway and turned back onto the public road.
No one followed them. Not that Ty could see.
That didn’t mean much. He knew from bitter experience that small towns rarely gave up their darkest secrets without a struggle. The more dangerous the secret, the more it took to drag the truth out into the light.
“So,” he said, when they were well clear of the old slave house, “tell me about Timothy French.”
18
Mimsy Murray paced up and down the length of the front porch, her phone clamped to her ear. Adelson’s line rang out again. She clicked the phone off.
He was likely drunk. Or getting there. Either passed out on the couch, or hunched over a bottle of bourbon.
That girl walking through his door—it must have been like seeing a ghost. Who knew what feelings it might have stirred up in him? Even at his age, did a man really change? Women usually softened as their bodies did, but men could be different.
She called him once more. Again there was no reply.
Mimsy wasn’t afraid of the reporter, and what she might be able to prise from Adelson. But the man with her, Johnson? He might be a different proposition altogether. He looked more than capable of getting the truth from someone if he set his mind to it, whether they wanted to give it up or not.
And even if Adelson kept his mouth shut, what then?
Mimsy had believed what the reporter had said about not giving up. There was no questioning her sincerity. Mimsy recognized a cussed streak in a woman when she saw it. She had stared at one in her mirror every morning for the past sixty-plus years: the unwillingness to bend; the ability to stick with something to the bitter end.
Sooner or later someone would talk. She had no doubt of it. And once one person started talking, others would join in. There would be nothing to stop them.
For the most part, the old ways were gone. The idea that you had to stand by each other against the outside world. The belief that you couldn’t yield an inch. The modern world and modern ideas had seen to that.
There was only one way for the town to hold firm against the tide, and that was to cauterize the infection. The question was, how to do it without making the mistakes they’d made before? The reporter French, they’d never found his body. No body, no proof of foul play, only suspicion. Dumping Carole Chabon in the swamp had been the error. A million to one shot that she would be found, but sometimes million to one shots came in.
The door opened behind her, interrupting her train of thought. Sue Ann’s head appeared around the frame. She was about the last person Mimsy wanted to speak with.
“I’m going to be heading home,” Sue Ann said.
Mimsy stood on the porch and grasped the railing. She stared out into the darkness. “Your money’s in an envelope on top of the fireplace. I left you something a little extra in there . . . for the upset. Don’t go saying anything about this evening to anyone. Same goes for Lyle.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Sue Ann.
“Good,” said Mimsy. She heard the door start to close behind her. “Sue Ann?”
“Yes?”
Mimsy closed her eyes for a second. She could feel the swamp in the distance, seemingly still, but quietly seething with movement beneath the surface. The hunters and their prey moved at night, the ’gators on an endless quest for sustenance.
“When you get home, maybe tell RJ not to feed those ’gators of his. We’re going to need them hungry.”
Her order was met with silence. She turned around.
“You go to hell, Mary Elizabeth Murray.”
“If I do,” said Mimsy, “I’m taking you and RJ with me. He’s every bit as much a part of this as I am.”
“No, he ain’t.”
“You ever hear of conspiracy?” Mimsy asked her. “That’s what they call it. You help, you’re as guilty as the person who did it.”
“You wouldn’t admit to anything,” said Sue Ann.
Mimsy pursed her lips. She was thinking. “You heard her. She isn’t going to let this
go.”
“She’ll get tired, go back to New York.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“I don’t want any part in any of this,” said Sue Ann. She was thinking of RJ, and of how he still woke up some nights screaming, and in a sweat so bad she had to change the bed sheets.
“Too late for that,” said Mimsy, turning her attention back to the dark horizon.
19
The swamp closed in from both sides as the Honda took a sweeping bend. Inside, Ty’s attention was split between the narrow country road and the story that Cressida inexplicably, and possibly unforgivably, had chosen not to tell him until now.
“He must have been getting close to what happened when he was murdered.”
Timothy French, an idealistic young reporter from Minnesota, had also grown fascinated with the Carole Chabon murder case and come down to Florida to ask some of the questions that Cressida had.
“But you don’t know for sure he was murdered,” said Ty, as the road took another turn, and he eased off the gas to get round it safely.
“Come on,” said Cressida. “He was last seen down here investigating the story. He told his editor and family he’d been threatened, and then he went missing. What else could have happened?”
Ty conceded the point with a shrug. She was likely right. “What did the cops say?” he said.
“What do you think? No body, no witnesses, not even a speck of blood found in his rental car, and no one was talking. They had to give it up.”
“But they suspected foul play?”
“They did, but what were they going to do?”
“And you didn’t think to mention any of this to me?”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I was going to tell Gregg, but I thought he might get spooked and not allow me to come down here. I said there had been threats to reporters covering the case so he would assign me someone like you, but I didn’t give him the details.”
“Did you tell him you were related to Carole Chabon?”
“Not in so many words. I may have said it had a personal connection to me or something.”
“That could mean anything,” said Ty.
“You think I’ve messed up, right?” Cressida asked, studying him with those blazing green eyes.
She was hoping he’d absolve her, Ty thought. “Yeah, you did. You’ve let me walk into this situation with a huge chunk of information missing. Threat assessments aren’t just a box-checking exercise. I need to know what I’m walking into when I take on a close-protection gig.”
“But we’re still here. There’s no harm done.”
“No thanks to you,” said Ty.
“Listen, they’re not going to do anything to me. They wouldn’t risk it. Not after everything that’s happened.”
Ty took a moment to ponder the naivety of youth. At Cressida’s age he might have thought the same. But, then, he’d already seen some of the less salubrious parts of the world, and witnessed human nature at its worst. No, he reflected, he hadn’t been that naive. “You think that why?” he snapped. “Because they might get caught? Because they’re scared of the law? Listen, places like this, these people are the law. They’re not scared of jack, otherwise they wouldn’t do what they’ve done. And that’s assuming the person or people capable of lynching a young girl and then disappearing a reporter are working with a full deck, which is highly debatable.”
“So what are you saying? You’re going to ditch me?”
Ty hit the brakes, and the Honda skidded to a stop. “No, I’m not. I have a job to do, which is keeping you alive, and I plan on doing that job. However, in order to perform my duties I expect full disclosure. No secrets. You feel me?” He stared at her.
She nodded. “Agreed, and I’m sorry. Are we good?” She reached out her hand.
He took it. “We’re good.” He took his foot off the brake pedal and got the car moving again.
“What do you think she was getting at when she was saying all that stuff about Adelson Shaw?” Cressida asked.
“Well, let’s see. They were an item, or that’s what it sounded like. Then all of a sudden they weren’t. She never married anyone else, which sounds like she got her heart broken by the guy.”
“Then all that stuff about Carole being a whore,” Cressida continued. “You think Adelson and Carole . . .”
“Hooked up?” said Ty.
“Yeah. I mean those were some pretty heavy hints.”
“Guess you’ll have to ask our host,” said Ty.
Cressida stared out of the window. Briefly Ty studied her reflection in the passenger side window. “She sleeps with a white guy, and next thing she’s killed,” said Ty. “That might just do it. Even back then.”
“Sleeping with the wrong person these days can get someone killed. Except this wasn’t a crime of passion. A crime of passion doesn’t involve lynching someone. That’s not a one-man job.”
“Or a one-woman job,” said Ty.
They were clearly thinking the same thing. Had the rift between Mimsy and her suitor had something to do with Carole Chabon’s appearance in town? And was that what had led to the murder?
Lynchings often had an unspoken sexual component. More than one black man had been strung up because he’d whistled at a white woman. Even in the 1970s mixed relationships were still somewhat taboo.
It was certainly a possibility that Carole might inadvertently have stirred passions without even being aware of it. Nothing more would have needed to happen than her being alone with a white man. Ty was sure that Mimsy had also made a reference to her house. Could that have been where it all started? With Carole Chabon ringing the doorbell and Adelson Shaw, alone in the house, inviting her in?
“So tell me about this Women’s KKK,” said Ty. “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“Oh, it was, although they were called Women of the Ku Klux Klan,” said Cress. “Most people don’t know about it. It was real big in the 1920s. They had about half a million members at their peak. Mostly in the South and the Midwest. They were kind of a mix of a women’s social organization—you know, bake sales, sewing circles . . .”
“Cross burnings?”
“Exactly.” Cressida smiled. “You had to be a white Protestant woman to join. But they were also kind of feminist too. They had links to the women’s suffrage movement, which kind of brought them into conflict with the regular Klan.”
“But that was way back then.”
“Yes, but Mimsy’s mother was a member. She led a klavern around here. I guess she passed down the ideals to her daughter, who kept the flame burning.”
“You knew about this before you came down here?”
Cressida nodded. “Want to know who else was involved?”
“Go on.”
“Our sweet little local librarian, Miss Parsons.”
“Damn. Can’t see her galloping around in the middle of the night wearing a hood. What about our host, Adelson?”
Cress shook her head. “That’s where it gets interesting. As far as I could discover, he never had any involvement with the Klan. In fact, in Darling the membership through the seventies was almost all women. It was like this strange little enclave all on its own, fighting a rearguard action to keep segregation. They’ve done a pretty good job too.”
“So when Carole Chabon popped up in their town, Mimsy killed her?” Ty asked.
“Or directed it,” said Cressida. “You saw how she is. The temper she has. And how everyone seems to be scared of her.”
“Apart from Adelson Shaw.”
“Apart from him. I have a hunch that if anyone’s going to let something slip about what really happened it just might be him.”
Ty remembered something. “So what did the note say? Get out of town? Or, let me guess, it was a coupon for the local car wash?”
Cressida unfolded the piece of paper. “It’s kind of hard to tell exactly. I don’t think English was the person’s strong point.”
She handed it over to Ty
. He reached up and popped on the cabin light of the Honda, allowed the car to slow and took the note while keeping one hand on the wheel.
The handwriting was a chicken scrawl of capital letters.
I can help you. Meet me next to this place tonight at midnight. I’ll be waiting for you.
Then there was a hand-drawn map of the road through town, and a turn-off beyond it, marked, according to an annotation, with a sign for an alligator farm.
Ty handed back the note. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“I have to go.”
“You do? You don’t think that if someone wants to talk they couldn’t find a way to meet you that doesn’t involve the dead of night next to an alligator farm? I mean, come on, that’s like a set-up for a slasher picture.”
“But I thought I had a bodyguard with me.”
“You have a close-protection operative with you,” said Ty, using his partner Lock’s description.
“What’s the difference?”
“Bodyguards have thicker necks, wear sunglasses indoors, suits that are so tight they can’t actually move, and they do whatever the hell their principal tells them to do.”
“And close-protection operatives?”
“I may not be a good example. My neck’s pretty yoked and I’ve been known to wear shades inside.”
“Come on, you’re the one brought it up.”
Ty sighed. “Part of my job, a big part, is to make sure that the principal makes good choices.”
“Make sure?”
“Okay, advise.”
“But I don’t have to take that advice,” said Cressida.
“Correct.”
“So I say I’m not going to pass this up.”
“Tell you what, we’ll drive down there and I’ll scope it out. If I deem it safe we can do the meet.”
“And what if they’ll only meet with me?”
“Absolutely not. Under no circumstances.”
“But you can’t stop me.”
It was Ty’s turn to get annoyed. “Listen, how about I don’t tell you how to do your job, and you don’t tell me how to do mine? You think Timothy French maybe got a note like this just before he went missing? I’d say the odds are good.”