When I am Dead, My Dearest: A Hunter Jones Mystery

by Charlotte Moore

  “I like modern,” Taneesha said. “Totally modern.”

  Almost as soon as Hunter was off the phone, another call came in. It was Robin Hilliard, sounding panicky, wanting to talk about the message he had gotten from an Atlanta television reporter who wanted to interview him.”

  “Should I talk to her or not?” he asked. “They’re coming to Merchantsville this afternoon. She already talked to Olivia Benedict’s editor, and her sister. It could be bad publicity, but it could be good, too, as long as she makes it clear that Olivia Benedict didn’t get poisoned here… but then Megan Roland was having a big fit about any of it being in the news, and…”

  He sounded panicky.

  “I’ll come by in about half an hour,” Hunter said sympathetically. “I’ll have Bethie with me.”

  “Colin can entertain her,” Robin said. “He’s good with kids.”

  “The Rolands were here overnight,” Robin explained when he and Hunter were having coffee in the kitchen later. “Sam called to tell them they could get back in their house. Would you believe with as much money as they have Megan said they were going to leave the bill unpaid for now, because she expects the Sheriff’ Office to pay for it, since she says her husband did absolutely nothing wrong. I have an idea we’re never going to get paid, but I honestly don’t care as long as Mr. Best Selling Author doesn’t get drunk in Hilliard House again. Now what do you think I ought to do about the reporter?”

  Hunter listened to the message the reporter had left and said , “Okay, let her call again, and then tell her you will confirm that Miss Benedict was a guest at Hilliard House and was doing a review for Southern Journey, that you have the deepest sympathy for her family. Period. Refer her to Sam for any more information. Don’t let her get all chummy with you. Anything you say could wind up in print.”

  What she didn’t add was that she could easily imagine Robin getting nervous and chattering, or a skilled interviewer leading him into saying more than he should.

  “I just wish I had driven him home myself,” Robin said mournfully.

  “Stop that right now,” Hunter said, putting her hand over his.

  “This place is as beautiful as a castle,” Bethie announced, coming back in with Colin, “and I want my room to be just like the Dogwood Room. Look at this book, Mom. It’s more than 100 years old. Mr. Colin said I could take it home and read it if I’d be sure to bring it back.”

  “It belonged to Aunt Mae-Lula,” Robin said. “We found it up in the attic. We’ve been dusting off some of her old books and putting them on the bedside tables.”

  Hunter reached out to take the book and look at it. It had a musty smell.

  On the gray-green cover she read Gone Are the Days: Tales of Plantation Life. By Col. Jimmy Sheffield.

  She opened the book, and a memory came back from her college course in children’s literature. It hadn’t exactly been banned, but had fallen out of favor with librarians and teachers because of complaints that it made slavery seem like a happy condition. She wasn’t at all sure that it was a book Bethie should read, but she was curious, herself.

  “Let me read it first,” she told Bethie. “You’ve got four books out from the library that you need to finish.”

  She tucked it into her shoulder bag.

  “You know,” Robin said, “I think that Aunt Mae Lula told me the man who wrote that book lived here once and was related to the Rolands somehow, but not to us.”

  “Everybody in this county is related to you, Robin,” Colin said with a grin.

  “I never heard of any Sheffields around here,” Hunter said.

  “Maybe he was married to one of the Hilliards way back,” Robin said, frowning a little. “I don’t think Aunt Mae-Lula was all that impressed with Col. Jimmy. She got that bulldog scowl when she mentioned him. “

  “Well, the book did get some criticism,” Hunter said.

  “No, it wasn’t that,” Robin said. “She liked the book. But anyway, he’s got some kind of local connection. You could ask Annie Laurie Wooten. I think she knows more about Merchantsville than Aunt Mae-Lula did, and if there’s a story behind it, she’ll know it.

  Hunter pulled the book out looked inside at the opening pages.

  “He served in the Civil War and the book was published in 1902,” she said. “Whatever the story was, it happened a long time ago.”

  April 12, 1902

  Once a week, Sophie Sheffield Roland went to the little lending library that the Merchantsville Women’s Club had set up in a corner of the Hilliard Conservatory. She always brought four books back and took out four. Because the lending period was two weeks, she went one week to choose her own books, and took her children the next week. She liked to supervise their choices.

  On this particular morning, Mary Grace Bankston, who was volunteering there greeted her with an excited smile.

  “I was hoping to see you today, Mrs. Roland,” she said. “We have your father’s book.”

  “My father’s book?”

  Sophie wondered briefly if that was the odd title of some new novel.

  “I’m sure you already have one, but I thought you’d like to know the library has two copies for lending. Mrs. Sarah Jane Sheffield was kind enough to send them to us, and I believe the library committee is planning to buy at least two more, because it is such a good book for parents to read to their children.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sophie said.

  Mary Grace handed Sophie a small book, meant for children’s hands, entitled “Gone Are the Days: Tales of Plantation Life.”

  On the cover, the author was listed as Colonel Jimmy, but inside his full name was given: Col. (CSA-Ret.) James Jeremiah Sheffield.

  “No,” Sophie thought. “It couldn’t be…”

  Apprehensively, she opened the book to the first chapter, winced when she saw the badly-done illustration, read a little and then turned one page after another, her anger and indignation growing.

  When she finally spoke, it took an effort to keep her voice calm and ladylike.

  “My late father did not write these stories,” she said to the volunteer librarian. “He would never have published them under his own name, because he didn’t write them and he never lived on a plantation. My mother wrote these stories and she would never have allowed such distasteful illustrations.” She stopped and took a breath, holding her shoulders straighter, her cheeks hot with anger. “And as for Sarah Jane Birdsong Sheffield, I can say with no hesitation that my stepmother has done this for whatever money she can make from it now that my father’s gone. I will take steps to stop her. In the meantime, this book needs to be removed from the library’s collection.”

  The young woman looked embarrassed at this outpouring of personal information, but she was a Bankston, and not to be bullied.

  “Perhaps you could write a letter to the library committee,” she said politely, “I don’t know that I’m authorized to remove any books from the collection.”

  “Perhaps I will,” Sophie said, composing herself, “I’m sorry, Mary Grace. It’s certainly not anything you would have known about. In the meantime, I will borrow this copy so that I can show it to my husband. He is an attorney and will know the right steps to take.”

  She signed her name to the card in the back of the book, handed it to Mary Grace Bankston and left, too shaken even to choose more books for her next week’s reading. She held the book tightly in her gloved hand, willing herself not to weep, even as memories flooded back.

  She had lost her beloved mother when she was thirteen, following the birth of her brother Jamie, and she had asked her father just a few years ago if he had the portfolio full of the stories her mother had read to her, the ones she had told and then written down. He told her he might have seen them, but would have to go through his files to find them. She had asked his wife, Sarah Jane, about them after his death and was met with a blank stare.

  “Stories?” Sarah Jane had said after the funer
al, “I don’t have any idea what stories you mean. I don’t believe we have anything that was your mother’s. I seem to remember that you and Jamie inherited everything that belonged to her.”

  Sophie’s mood lightened when she came to her beautiful new home, and saw it in the full glory of spring. It was set back on the highest point of the wide sloping yard, the old magnolia on one side, the house painted slate blue with an ornate white trim that exactly matched the blossoming dogwoods. The trees had been there when the old house she and Jamie had inherited was torn down to make way for the new house. She had insisted on saving them, every tree.

  They had paid Jamie for his share of the property, and the new house was built in the style they called Queen Anne, with decorative shingles and a wraparound porch. It was three stories tall if you included the tower rooms. It was nothing at all like the Hilliard mansion, where her rich cousins lived, but quite as fine in its own way, and cozier on the inside, too.

  That evening, after the children were in their rooms, her husband, Burton Roland, listened patiently to her distress about the book, and explained just as patiently that there was not going to be a lawsuit over it.

  “There would be no way to prove who wrote the stories after all these years,” he said, making a great fuss of filling his pipe with tobacco, while he thought further.

  “And after all, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Even if a judge would hear such a case, would you really want to sit in court and testify against your stepmother? Suppose it wound up in the newspapers? From what you’ve told me about the whole situation, it would be wiser not to have our family’s name connected with your stepmother any more than necessary.”

  Sophie winced. She knew her father had moved back to his hometown of Chaneyville because they had no lawyer there, and his clients in Merchantsville had drifted away after his connection with the Hilliard family became strained. Everybody knew that his first child by his second wife was born only seven months after their marriage, and less than two years after the death of his first wife. Her stepmother was not being invited to become a member of any of the women’s clubs. Yes, her father was a man of honor, as she had said, and carried himself with great dignity, but he had lapses of judgment, he drank too much on occasion, and he was just plain foolish about Sarah Jane.

  She realized that Burton was about to brush the whole thing off.

  “Would you at least write a letter to the library committee?” Sophie asked.

  “And have those fine ladies tell their husbands that I am trying to get a children’s story book taken off the library shelves?” he asked, making the mistake of chuckling ever so slightly.

  Sophie stood straight up.

  Burton, who was often oblivious to his wife’s body language, didn’t notice. He flipped idly though the book.

  “I really hope you won’t stay upset about this, Sophie. It’s only a book for children. Does it really matter so much who wrote it? It won’t make any money, anyway.”

  Sophie snatched the book from his hand and left the room without a word. Shaking with anger, she went upstairs to her dressing room, and found a pair of scissors, which she wielded viciously, cutting the flimsy cover off the library book. Then she tore the title page out with her hand, tore out the illustration, and sat down in her mother’s old rocking chair. Soothed by the rocking, she began to read the stories again.

  It was all there, she thought, when she reached the end. At least that idiot Sarah Jane hadn’t changed anything or left anything out.

  It was still all about Tiny, Timothy and Thomasina having fun on the old plantation, meeting Bandit, the talking raccoon, and Ophelia the talking opossum, discovering a cave only to be chased out of it by a bear, picking blackberries and watching as the cook made a pie. There was the wonderful story about their building their little raft and floating down the creek to the river, where they could have been washed on to the ocean if Tiny’s big brother had not seen them and rescued them. She had forgotten the one in which they met a rattlesnake and Timothy cut it in half with a sword and the one about the dogs eating the lye soap and causing a fright as bubbles came out of their mouths.

  There was no war at all in the book, no fathers going off to fight, not a hint or shadow of it. Tiny and all his family were slaves, but in the stories he was simply a playmate, often the leader of adventures.

  Calming down a little, she decided she would tell the young woman at the lending library that she had lost the book and would be happy to pay for it. Perhaps, she thought, she would make a new cover for it. And she would make sure that the ladies of Merchantsville, the mothers and grandmothers who might otherwise buy the book, understood that the stories were her mother’s stories.

  The next day, she went to her mother’s grave with its stern angel standing guard, and said, “I will make this right, mother. I promise.”

  Then she went home. She wrote to Sarah Jane Birdsong Sheffield in Chaneyville, saying that she intended to sue her and also the publishing house responsible for printing the book. This was not true, since Burton would not agree, but she wrote it anyway, thinking with grim satisfaction that Sarah Jane would worry for months about it.

  She ended the letter with the truth – that she considered all association between the two of them and their children permanently severed. She then wrote to her brother, Jamie, who was in his last year at Mercer University.

  A week later, he wrote back, “Sister, I am sorry this has distressed you so. Our stepmother has behaved unethically, but that is no surprise, and I think Burton’s judgment on the matter is sound.”

  And then he changed the subject to his engagement and his future plans, which did not include moving back to Merchantsville.

  Gone are the Days was a regional success. It became a favorite in many white Southern homes, not just as a book of lively stories, but – for many of the parents and grandparents who read it aloud – it seemed a kind of proof that entirely too much fuss had been made about slavery.

  There came a time, however, when no new editions were published, when children’s librarians were starting to remove it from the shelves, and the very few remaining copies in good condition were collectors’ items.

  At the time that Sophie’s great-grandson, Hill Roland, decided to move back to Merchantsville to live in the house his great-great-grandparents had built, there were only two copies of the book in town. One, often mended, was kept on a locked shelf of old books in the office of the director of the Merchantsville Public Library, who did not know it was there. The other was the one that had belonged to the late Mae-Lula Hilliard.

  Hill Roland brought a third one with him. One of his most prized possessions since childhood, it didn’t look like the others. It was missing parts of pages where pictures had been, and had a handmade cover, cut from stiff cardstock that had yellowed with age. On the cover, carefully printed in black ink that had turned brown over the years, were the title and author: Tiny, Timothy and Thomasina by Lorena Hilliard Sheffield.

  CHAPTER 6

  Hunter had just finished loading the dishwasher after supper when her cell phone rang.

  “Is this Hunter Jones?”

  It was a brisk female voice.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Megan Brooks Roland, Hill Roland’s wife, and his agent, too. I hope you don’t mind my calling you at home, but I really need some help. I’ve been reading some of your work in The Messenger, and it’s very professional.”

  She spoke as if she were calling from her New York office.

  “Thank you,” Hunter said, just as professionally.

  “I’m looking for a writer and I wondered if you’d be interested in a little job. We pay well.”

  “I don’t free-lance. I’m the Associate Editor of The Messenger,” Hunter said.

  “Oh, but you wouldn’t need to put your name on it. I just need a statement to release about the, uh, unfortunate incident that took place here in the house. I was thinking maybe something that made it clear that
my husband isn’t under arrest or a suspect or anything like that, with maybe a note of sympathy to Miss Benedict’s family.”

  She paused, but not long enough for Hunter to respond.

  “I’m in a kind of bind, being down here. The girl who usually does my press releases is on vacation, and I’m getting media calls because my name and cell phone number are on my husband’s website. I was thinking that you’d, well, be able to get some kind of statement from your husband, so I can do some damage control. I’ll pay you whatever you say…”

  Hunter felt an edge of annoyance, but she also heard a note of real fear in the other woman’s voice. She flipped a coin mentally and decided to be a friend, and cut through the nonsense.

  “Megan,” she said. “You’re in marketing, right?”

  “Yes,” Megan said. “Well, that’s part of my…”

  “Well, I’m in news,” Hunter said firmly, “and it’s different. I don’t do damage control and you shouldn’t even try. Just don’t answer the calls, and for heaven’s sake don’t go asking reporters to do public relations work for you.”

  “I didn’t mean… ” Megan began.

  “Of course you did,” Hunter said. “And my advice to you is to ignore the calls and do nothing. And the same applies if anybody shows up at your house. Just say ‘We have no comment at this time.’”

  “You’re serious.” Megan said. “Just stonewall?”

  “Absolutely. You shouldn’t even be talking to me. It happens that I am a nice person, so I’m not firing questions at you and taking notes.”

  Megan sighed.

  “Yes, you are a nice person,” she said. “And you’re right. You must think I’m an idiot calling you like this.”

  “No, I don’t at all,” Hunter said. “I think you’ve got a bad situation to deal with and you’re trying to protect your husband. Besides, I’m glad you called because I was going to call you anyway. Once this all settles down, I’m hoping to do an interview with your husband about his moving back home and what his plans are now that the trilogy is finished.”