“What are you doing?” I asked when I saw her position.
“Staying away from the windows. They might think I’m you. I don’t want to get shot.”
“I see. Well, I think that whoever was shooting can see well enough to know that you are you and I am me.”
“There’s always guilt by association,” she said.
“True enough. Maybe we should move all of the living room chairs into the hallway.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“I need to talk with you about the names you gave me,” I said as I pulled up one of the living room chairs close to her chair. Rosey sat down by a window without moving a chair. He enjoyed defying the fates.
“What about them?”
“I have discovered that there have been other deaths this year at Peace Haven. Three more, in fact, than the list you provided me.”
“They were not my friends, only acquaintances. Small town, you know.”
“So, the only reason for the list you gave me is that they were your friends.”
“I have known them forever.”
“Long time. Any other association for this group?”
“Whataya mean?”
“Is this group related to one another? Club, church, gang?”
“Cute. They’re all in a street gang.”
“Seriously. I need to find some connection.”
“Not church. Well, Mildred and I were Baptists. But Rowland was a Methodist. Different churches. Let me think… no clubs, except that Sophie, Alice, and Marilyn … and I were all in the Garden Club. Ladies thing, you know.”
“Well, I’m looking for anything that connects this group other than your friendship.”
“What’s wrong with my friendship?”
“I’m not disparaging your friendship with these people. I just don’t think someone would be killing them because they were your friends.”
“Probably not. I’m not that influential.”
We sat in silence for several minutes while my mother pondered the names of her late friends. Rosey appeared to be asleep although I knew he wasn’t. He possessed the ability to close his eyes and rest while still being alert to everything around him.
“This is probably not it, but I seem to recall that some of them, no, wait a minute, let me think here … yes, most of them served on a jury back in the seventies.”
“Most of them?”
“Okay, they all did, as I now recall. They all served on a jury.”
“You remember the particular trial?”
“Of course I remember the trial. It was the most famous trial this little town has ever had.”
“Oh, that trial. The J.D. Rowland trial.”
“You were just a little girl when that happened.”
“I was nine years old.”
“You remember it?”
“Only what Daddy told me.”
“He shouldn’t have told you anything. It was horrible.”
“Murder always is.”
25
The County Courthouse, along with the official records and deeds, was located in the small town of Oxford, which was fifteen miles from Clancyville. The Clerk of Court was an acquaintance of mine named Jayne Nichols. Word on the street was that she ran the office like a well-oiled machine and knew everything about everything related to the official records on file in her office. Rosey and I were sitting in Jayne’s office the day after my mother’s sudden recollection of our county’s famous jury trial.
“You look great Clancy. How’ve you been?”
“Great. And you?” Small talk never was a forte of mine when it came to former classmates on any level. In fact, small talk was not a forte of mine when it came to anyone, but chiefly with former classmates. If they didn’t like me in school, why would they care how I’ve been now?
“Oh, you know. Billy is fine, but out of work. Got laid off from the plant. Kids are growing and going hither and yon,” she said with great exuberance as she adjusted a stack of papers on the left hand side of her desk. She placed them neatly on the right side of her desk.
“Hither and yon,” I said with absolutely no exuberance.
“Roosevelt, what are you doing now?”
“Advisory work,” he smiled easily at her.
“Wow, that sounds interesting,” she smiled back. She moved the same stack of papers from the right side back to the left side. Wow, office work can be exhausting to say nothing of demanding.
It didn’t sound too interesting to me, but then I wasn’t much into the language of small talk. It sounded ubiquitous. And evasive. Since I knew Rosey, I knew it was both ubiquitous and evasive.
“Jayne, we need some help finding information about a trial that occurred at the end of the 60’s. May have carried over into 1970.”
“Have a name of the person on trial?” she asked.
“J.D. Rowland.”
Jayne was in the middle of moving that same stack of papers back again to the other side of her desk and stopped. “Oh, that trial,” she said as she put the papers down in front of her, the middle of the desk. Let it not be said that Jayne didn’t stay busy with her job.
“I’m working a case and I need to look at the transcript and whatever notes you have on that trial.”
“Big case, huh?”
“Big enough.”
“Well, that surely was a famous trial around here, I’m told. I was just a child in those days, you know. I remember my parents talking about it. Most folks thought J.D. was a hero, not a criminal,” she stared at Rosey and managed a smile that was pleasant, but not friendly. It was the kind of smile often associated with small talk and Southern politeness. Contrived would be a good word for it.
“Killing two people in cold blood hardly qualifies you for a medal,” Rosey said.
“Well, everybody’s welcome to their opinion. It’s the American way,” she said. She typed something into her computer and stared intently at her screen. I wanted to say something smart and sassy, but since I needed Jayne’s help, I let it slide. She would never know how fortunate she was.
She wrote down something on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
“This is the number of the trial records. You can go down the hall, last door on the right, and they will help you find that file. You may read it in that room, but the file cannot leave the courthouse. It will likely be a large folder which contains both the official transcript of the trial and any official notes retained by order of the judge who presided.”
“Thanks, Jayne.” I took the paper from her.
“Hope your investigation goes well.”
“Thanks.”
“Good to see you again,” she said to me as she held out her hand for me to shake it. It must be an election year, the best I could figure. Hers was an elected position. She probably thought I could vote in Pitt County. Neither parting word nor need-your-vote handshake was offered to Rosey, but she did nod in his direction and gave him yet another of the famous Southern smiles that suggested polite, Southern prejudice. Sometimes I simply adored my hometown.
“You feel slighted?” I said as we moved down the hall following Jayne’s directions to the historical records’ room.
“Not yet. Her hand was clammy. Never did like to shake clammy hands.”
“How could you tell?”
“The great paper-shifting act she performed in front of us. Showed a good case of nervousness. Wet palms and nervousness often go together.”
“They might go with outdated opinions, too,” I said.
“Likely.”
We arrived at our destination. The file room was larger than I had imagined. The Oxford Court House was an old building with tall ceilings. Ceiling lights and ceiling fans were juxtaposed around the room, extended from the ceiling by long, round pipes that stopped the fixtures about seven feet from the floor. They were close enough to provide both necessary light and gentle breezes for the space. The walls, where visible, were lined with both black and white photographs of
former and current dignitaries of the county and state. Many of them were dearly departed, but I recognized some of the faces in the pictures. Drabness was on full display for all who entered this gray-walled room.
One of the rows of photographs was dedicated to all of the sheriffs of Pitt County. I spotted Daddy’s picture immediately. He was the fifth one from the end. He had served the county almost fifteen years by the time he was killed. I scanned the other photos and dates. His was the second longest tenure of all the sheriffs, past and present. Gerald Thornton had the longest, some forty years. Sheriff Thornton was 82 years old when he died in office in 1957. I remember him through the stories my daddy told, almost without end. Bill Evans, my daddy, had been Thornton’s deputy since early 1955. My daddy was the Sheriff who arrested J.D. Rowland in 1969.
“You gonna look at pictures all day or read this file,” Rosey said, breaking my train of remembrances about my father and his work.
We sat down at a table made of oak that was easily ten feet long and five feet wide. It covered the entire middle of the room. We sat down next to each other and divided the file between us. I began with the typed and bound official-looking manuscript of the court proceedings while Rosey took the disheveled papers and notes that had been crammed into the folder.
It took me only a few minutes to discover the names of the jurors. Rosey was still trying to organize his loose collection of papers.
“Okay, here is the list of those who served on the jury – J.R. Blair, Alice Blayne, Mildred Evans, Robert L. Lionheart, Joe Pearson, Marilyn Pearson, Ernestine Reynolds, Eli Rowland, Ernie Rowland, Rabbi Shelton, Skeeter Shelton, and Sophie Tucker. It appears that we might have our connection. Sophie, Alice, Marilyn, Rabbi, Eli, Mildred and Joe have all died this year.”
“Seven down, five to go.”
“Not without a fight.”
“To arms,” Rosey said softly. There were two or three office workers in the file room with us. “No other names?”
“I counted them. There are twelve names here.”
“I’m sure. What about the alternates?”
I skimmed several sections of the document I had. The papers were held together by one of those extra large metal binding clips which made reading the pages a bit cumbersome.
“Okay, here we go. They had a pool of twelve alternates. Just in case, I suspect.”
“Moment’s notice. The trial must go on.”
“M.L. Blanks, Dorothy Scruggs, Ben Shelton, Josephine Diggs, Betsy Pierson, E.R. Fitzgerald, Sr., Keith Brown, Sallie Mae Caruthers, Michael W. Sapps, J. Walton Hillsworth,” I stopped reading and stared at Rosey.
“That’s only ten,” he said.
“Two more names on the list.”
“You want a drum roll?”
“No need. They’re dramatic enough. Sarah Jones and Rachel Jo Evans.”
“Sho-nuff.”
26
“And you didn’t tell me because…?” I said to my mother during supper.
“I didn’t think it was important. And …,” she paused and took a bite of food.
“And?”
“And I really didn’t remember being an alternate. I never served. I was just on call.”
“But you had to be a part of the proceedings on some level,” I said.
“As I recall, the twelve of us, the alternates, were sort of sequestered.”
“Sort of sequestered.”
“They put us in a room in the court house with a loud speaker. We could hear the trial. No closed-circuit television in Pitt County in those days. They treated us a little like the real jury, tried to keep us informed and all …of the goings-on. We were housed at the same motel as the real jury. Couldn’t talk about the trial with each other or anyone else either for that matter. We just didn’t get to see anything. But, we heard it all.”
“Interesting.”
“So Sarah was the only one who replaced any of the twelve original jurors?” I asked.
“Well, at some point, I seem to recall, there was one other juror … I can’t remember which one … she seemed to be having a problem with the trial … was emotionally upset or something. They almost replaced her, but …well, I have this vague recollection that they didn’t. She came around finally. Had some intermissions or something.”
“You don’t recall her name.”
“Too long ago. I must not have known her.”
“So, this Robert L. Lionheart died and Sarah replaced him well into the trial.” I was recapitulating to see if I could jog any hidden memories for my mother.
“You don’t remember Bob Lionheart? He ran the hobby and sports shop downtown. You used to go in there with Bill to buy fishing tackle. He was the old man who always gave you that licorice junk. You came home looking like you had been eating mud pies. Had that black stuff all over your face.”
“No memory of that, well, maybe the candy, but not the man.”
“Kind old man. Irony was that he had a bad heart. At least that’s what I recall. He died of a heart attack. Keeled over in the courtroom. Hey, you know what, I think I have some newspaper clippings about that trial. I forgot all about those.”
She left us chewing our supper food and her revelations. We could hear some noises now and then coming from upstairs. By the time Rosey and I were finishing supper, Mom was back with an oversized, cardboard box that had housed some boots long ago. She seemed pleased with herself for having found it.
“Look through this. Maybe you and Rosey can find something helpful for the investigation.”
She handed the box to him.
The large box was indeed full of newspaper clippings about the trial. It was arranged in reverse order, the end of the trial and the verdict news was on top. Once he discovered this, Rosey began to go through the clippings, piece by piece, and arrange them in chronological order. That took a few minutes, and from where I was sitting, it appeared to me to be a one-person task. I was preoccupied with my piece of apple pie and didn’t want to be disturbed. I don’t do any baking in Norfolk, and I hardly ever eat desserts, so this was a real treat for me. Rosey was not a dessert eater at all, and I could tell that his gracious refusal of the pie earlier in the meal was a significant disappointment to my mother. She prided herself on her cooking, and rightly so. I considered asking her for another piece.
“You ought to open a restaurant here in Clancyville.”
“A restaurant? What for?” Rachel asked.
“To feed people. What else would you open a restaurant for?”
“I don’t know. To make money. To kill yourself.”
“Well, it would be hard work,” I said.
“You betcha it would be hard work. You’ve never worked in a restaurant, have you?”
“No.”
“Well, let me tell you something, young lady,” my mother’s demeanor suddenly changed and she became an authority on the rigors of serving the public through the food medium. Rosey was still shuffling through the pile of clippings while we engaged in what sounded like several hundred reasons why my mother would never become a restaurateur.
“If you kept all of this newspaper history of the trial, why is your memory so vague on it?” Rosey asked trying not to sound judgmental.
“I kept it for Sarah. She wanted it. She thought the trial might be historic for the county.”
“So why doesn’t Sarah have it?” Rosey said.
“No room to store it at her place. She asked me to hold on to it. Said it might be informative one day.”
“Talk about predictions coming around,” I offered.
“Maybe informative for you two. Personally, I’ve never read all that stuff. Wouldn’t want to. I like to forget evil things.”
I finished my first and only piece of pie opting to maintain my girlish figure and joined Rosey in reading through the vast material my mother had saved for Sarah. I took advantage of his reading skills, savoring my last few bites of Mother’s apple delight. By the time I had joined him, he had covered the firs
t two weeks of the trial. I read the stack of clippings which he had already finished.
“How did you learn to read so quickly?”
“Can’t say.”
“Or won’t say?”
“I really have no idea. It was simply there. You know, a gift. So, I used it.”
“Still do.”
“Only when there are copious materials which require reading.”
Mother was busy washing the dishes and putting away the leftovers. I offered to help her with the chores at some point, but she told me to keep at it or I would be up all night reading that dreadful stuff. I accepted her refusal since I knew she was correct about the late night for me, chiefly because my speed reading was non-existent.
We stayed at the kitchen table, which provided us with ample space to sort out any clippings which might be particularly informative. That’s another way of saying that we were hoping to find some clues. That’s what detectives are supposed to be finding, I’m told.
I heard the kitchen clock strike the eleven o’clock hour. I was beginning to doze off from the excitement of the reading. Rosey was still at it, zipping through articles three times the speed I could muster. No wonder he finished at the top of his class at law school. I was impressed, but I said nothing. Doing my best to hold the male ego in check.
“Here, read this one,” he handed me a long clipping. “It’s about Lionheart’s death and Sarah coming on the jury. I think there’s a clue in there.”
“A real clue?” I said as I moved to the kitchen sink to retrieve a glass of water.
“Real as they come.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the clue,” I said after gulping down my juice glass full of water.
“Hey, you the detective. Detect.”
“I’m sleepy and tired.”
I returned to the table bringing another glass full of water with me.
“Everybody got issues.”
“Your sensitivity is overwhelming.”
“Yeah. Read it and we’ll discuss.”
It didn’t take long for my sleepiness to go away. The article matter-of-factly reported the death of Robert L. Lionheart, but his replacement became a center of attention. Sarah Jones was the first African-American to be a juror in Pitt County. That’s not the way the paper reported it. They used the term black. Times do change, like words.
The Peace Haven Murders Page 10