“Played what?”
“Piano. He used to come down sometimes in the afternoon, and I’d give him a lesson. But I guess your ma didn’t know about that either. He must have practiced some, because when he got back from the war, he’d come in and try to sweet-talk me into sliding off the bench so he could sit in. Usually he had to buy me a few drinks to seal the deal. And I got to hand it to the boy—he was good. Not as good as me, of course. But good all the same. All the girls used to think so, and that’s a fact.”
I jumped on that. “Did that cause any problems?”
“How do you mean?”
“Was someone else’s girl interested in Mr. Jefferson?”
“You mean was someone jealous because his girl was mooning around the piano while TJ played? I wouldn’t doubt it. He was a good-looking kid, just like his baby brother here. Had a smile that would charm the knickers off any girl. That’s what his friend used to say. And he was a war hero. Yeah, there was probably more than one fella that wished TJ had stayed over there in Europe. But he didn’t, did he?”
“Was there anyone in particular that you remember might have had a problem with him?” I asked.
“There were a few fights. Especially when folks had been drinking. But they always ended fast, usually with TJ asking the fellow involved if he really wanted to take a chance on a trained soldier. TJ was big and strong. Whatever fella it was who got himself all hot around the collar usually backed down, especially when TJ bought him a drink and sent his woman back to him.”
“He didn’t have his eye on anyone in particular?”
Mr. Rollins shook his head.
“TJ wasn’t like that,” he said. “He wasn’t the kind to steal someone else’s woman.”
“Did he date anyone?”
“TJ?” He thought for a moment. “Not that I know of. I don’t think he was settled in enough to think about that. Mostly he talked about starting a business. He wanted to make something of himself. He didn’t want to have to scratch for a living. If you want my opinion, he was a first-things-first kind of fella. First he’d get himself set up, then he’d start thinking about a wife and family.”
Another strikeout. I decided to try a different angle.
“Do you think he killed his friend?”
I sensed Daniel tensing up beside me.
“You mean that fella from Canada?” Mr. Rollins didn’t hesitate. “No, I do not. Oh, I know what they said. I know what the jury decided. But I never believed it. For one thing, those two was good friends. And the Canadian, he was easygoing. Friendly to everyone in the place, not just the white folks.”
Edgar had mentioned white kids in the Rooster too, and it had surprised me. My impression of Orrenstown was that black and white didn’t mix.
“Why did the white kids go there?” I asked.
“For the music, of course,” Mr. Rollins said. “It wasn’t all the white kids, just the ones who didn’t see much excitement in Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Who wanted something livelier. Who wanted to dance. Especially the girls. They used to come down here all dressed up and looking older than they really were. My, my, how they loved to dance. I don’t know what their mamas and papas would have said if they’d seen those churchgoing girls boogieing the night away.”
Boogieing? Was that some kind of dance?
“I heard that the Rooster burned down in 1949,” I said.
“Burned to the ground. Fire marshal said it was arson, but the police never did find out who did it—and that’s assuming they even tried. That Sheriff Beale, he wasn’t too interested in crimes against colored folk. But my, my, he sure was quick to make an appearance as soon as any white person made a complaint against a colored. He’s the kind of sheriff they had back in the day—you tell him some colored boy made a pass at his girl or his wife, and the next thing you know, that boy is doing time and can consider himself lucky if a lynch mob doesn’t show up outside the jailhouse, clamoring to string him up.”
I couldn’t help wondering if that’s why Sheriff Beale was living beyond his obvious means at the John H. Chisholm Home for the Aged—as payment for services rendered.
“It didn’t help that they found that fella in the river not half a mile from TJ’s mama’s house,” Mr. Rollins said. “Sheriff Beale was at TJ’s door as quick as a rabbit, wanting to take him in for questioning. Had to go to the Rooster to find him, and then had to back off because just about every man in the place put hisself between TJ and the sheriff, like they was daring the sheriff to arrest him.”
“Really?” Daniel’s eyes were wide. Clearly, he’d never heard this story before.
“Really,” Mr. Rollins said. “Like I said, your brother was a hero to the colored around here, if not to the whites. People admired him. They respected him. The sheriff had to scuttle back to his car and put out a call for reinforcements. Called in his two deputies, plus the sheriff and deputies from the next county over. Sat right outside in his car until they showed up, all of them with their shotguns out and racked, ready to start firing if they had to. That was the only way they could take TJ in.”
“Did he say anything?” I asked.
“TJ? Not a word. He was too smart to start mouthing off to a dozen armed police officers, all of them with twitchy trigger fingers on account of being outnumbered.”
“Did he say anything about Patrice?”
“When the cops were there?” Mr. Rollins gave his head a firm shake. “When he come in earlier that night, though, he asked about him. Patrice, you say his name was? Yeah, that sounds right. TJ was asking if anyone had seen him. Said he’d been looking for him all day because they were supposed to meet with the fella that owned the garage they were wanting to buy.”
“And?” I asked. “Had anyone seen him?”
“Not that day. I’m pretty sure he didn’t find anyone who had seen him. I remember he looked upset.”
“Upset?”
“Worried.”
Why would he be worried if he already knew where Patrice was, if he’d already killed him? That didn’t make sense. Unless he was worried that he’d be found out.
“Are you sure it was worry?” I asked.
“Sure as sunshine on a summer day. He was worried about what might have happened to his buddy. Guess he had good instincts, because it couldn’t have been more than a day later that they found the body in the river.”
“What about Patrice? Did he make any enemies?”
“Not that I know of. But then, I can’t say I paid all that much attention to him. And he wasn’t around nearly as much as TJ was.”
“I thought you said Patrice and TJ came down to the Rooster regularly, and that Patrice was friendly to everyone.”
“I said TJ came regular. Patrice came from time to time, and he was friendly when he was there. Talked to everyone. Seemed genuinely interested in what people were up to. But he wasn’t there nearly as often as TJ was.”
“Where was he when he wasn’t there?”
Mr. Rollins laughed. “What do I look like to you? One of those women with the headdress and the big glass ball? I have no idea where he was. Probably minding his own business somewhere.”
Or making enemies, I thought. It was possible. People in town didn’t like that TJ strutted around, as they put it, as if he was better than everyone else. They probably didn’t like it either that his buddy and soon-to-be business partner was white. I remembered the story the old men had told me.
By the time we thanked Mr. Rollins, I was already planning my next move. People in town clearly remembered Thomas Jefferson, murderer. Maybe a few of them remembered the victim.
“Now what?” Daniel said. He’d been kicking a stone in front of him all the way down the dirt road that led from the river to his house.
“How long was Patrice here before he ended up in the river?”
Daniel shrugged and kicked the stone hard. It skittered ten feet into the air, hit a larger rock and flew off into the scrub beside the road. When he got to the
bigger rock, he kicked that instead.
“A week? A month? Longer?” I asked.
“TJ brought me a birthday present.” His voice was so soft, so faraway, that it sounded as though he was talking to himself. “Toys from Germany. Really nice ones—a truck and a bus and some cars. All hand-painted. He said he found them in a bombed-out factory. They went inside, and there were toys everywhere. He and some of his buddies found a couple of boxes that were in perfect condition, so they threw them into the Jeep and brought them home. I still have them.”
I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to have something like that, a special gift from a family member, something that would forever and always remind you of that person.
“Ma told me he gave them to me three days after he got back—on my birthday. That was the beginning of April. Patrice died at the end of May.”
“So TJ and Patrice were back here almost two months before Patrice died.” Less than sixty days, but from what I had seen so far, a long time in a town like this, where every newcomer was noticed and speculated about. “Somebody must have gotten to know him or at least had some idea of how he spent his time when he wasn’t with your brother.”
“I guess.” Daniel didn’t sound convinced.
We walked in silence for a few minutes. Then I couldn’t help it—I had to ask.
“What happened to TJ’s father?”
Daniel looked at me.
“When your mom said he died, you acted kind of strange.”
“That’s because he didn’t just die. He was lynched.”
I stared at him.
“Lynched?”
“Somebody said he made a pass at a white woman, tried to assault her. He was arrested. A mob showed up at the jail and dragged him out and hung him.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Where was the sheriff?”
“I don’t know anything except that’s what happened, and I only know it because I heard my ma talking to one of her aunties about it after my dad died in an accident at the cannery. He got caught in some equipment and died before anyone could turn it off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ma cried for days. First she lost TJ’s dad, then TJ, then my dad.”
“Did anyone go to jail for what happened to TJ’s dad?”
“I dunno. I doubt it.”
“Didn’t your ma—”
“She would never talk about it, not even when I asked her. I went to the newspaper office one time, when the old man still worked there.” I guessed he meant Maggie’s father. “I wanted to see what was in the newspaper about it, but there wasn’t anything.”
“The paper didn’t cover it?”
“Some papers were missing. The old guy said they must have sold out or something. He said he didn’t recall what I was talking about, but you know what? I didn’t believe him.”
“When…when did it happen?”
“When TJ was still a kid. That’s all I know. But it’s like it never happened at all. No one talks about it.”
I didn’t know what to say.
I stood on a sidewalk in Orrenstown and looked up and down the street. I had a plan, but I was nervous. What if people didn’t want to talk to me? Sheriff Hicks had told Maggie that I’d been seen in Freemount. People were talking about me. Maybe they’d seen me with Daniel. Maybe some people didn’t like that any more than they’d liked seeing Mr. Jefferson and Mr. LaSalle together. Suddenly I felt like the old Cady, the poor little orphan girl from the Home, looked down upon by the likes of Mrs. Danforth, viewed as an unfortunate, the unwanted child of a foolish, unmarried mother, a person without a real name, without parentage, without my own “people.” A girl who would never be able to lay claim to a boy like Johnny Danforth, even though he was happy to kiss and cuddle me in the woods at the edge of town. A girl Mrs. Danforth had declared, to my face, to be beneath the likes of a boy like her Johnny. A nonentity.
And then I thought about Nellie Bly.
She wasn’t an orphan, but she was an outsider, at least at the beginning. She’d had to prove herself. She’d had to fight her way into a man’s world, the world of her dreams, the world of a newspaper reporter. And, like Maggie, she had made it. She had broken free of the women’s pages long before Maggie and other women had ever thought of doing something so daring. And she had done it by taking risks. By being bold.
If she could do it, so could I. At least, I hoped so.
I squared my shoulders and headed for the place that had so far proved to be my best source of information: the diner.
The only people there were the waitress and two older women in hats, eating tiny sandwiches and drinking tea. I ordered lemonade and, in a low voice, asked the waitress if the women were longtime residents of Orrenstown.
“Those two?” The waitress sniffed. “That one’s husband manages the cannery.” She nodded to the woman in the green pillbox hat. “The other one’s husband owns the real-estate office. They’ve been here since forever. They think they’re special on account of their husbands. That’s why they make me cut the crusts off their sandwiches. They think it’s more elegant. They must have read about sandwiches like that in those magazines they’re always buying that show how to decorate your house and entertain your guests.”
I’d already made up my mind. I left my lemonade on the counter and approached their table.
“I’m sorry to bother you—”
“Then don’t,” said the woman in the green hat. She had a pointy nose and too much rouge on her cheeks. “We’re having a private conversation, aren’t we, Helen?”
“Now, Eileen,” Helen said. She was plump, with a round face and pale blue eyes. Once upon a time, she might have been pretty. “Don’t give the girl a hard time.”
“Don’t you know who she is?” Eileen said. “She’s that girl who’s been asking about the Jefferson boy—the one that got shot escaping from prison.”
Helen had a twinkle in her eye when she looked up at me again.
“Is that right?”
I admitted that it was. “I was wondering—did you know Mr. Jefferson?”
“Of course not,” Eileen said.
“We certainly knew who he was,” Helen said.
“Everyone knew who he was. And what he was,” Eileen said. “I can’t say I was surprised that he ended up the way he did.”
I decided to ignore Eileen and concentrate instead on her companion.
“Did you know his friend?” I asked. “The man he’s supposed to have murdered?”
“His friend? The French fellow?”
“A man with no common sense at all, if you ask me.” Eileen sniffed.
“I used to see him around town from time to time,” Helen said. “But no, I can’t say that I knew him. I don’t think I ever spoke to the man.”
“Do you know anyone who might have spoken to him or known him?”
Helen thought for a moment and then shook her head.
“I can’t say that I do.” She didn’t ask why I wanted to know.
Strikeout. But they were only two people in a town full of people.
“Can you tell me which stores and businesses were here at the time of the murder?” I asked.
Helen seemed momentarily surprised by the question. Then she broke into a smile.
“You’re thinking that if he was in town for any length of time, then he would have frequented some of the businesses here. Very clever. Now, let me see. The hair salon is new. That is to say, there was always one here, but Etta sold the business when the arthritis made it impossible for her to continue. But then, I doubt your Frenchman would have stopped by there. Apart from that, I’d say pretty much everything else is the same.”
She wished me luck and weathered Eileen’s disapproval with aplomb.
I went from store to store and was only a little nervous. Mostly I managed to ignore the disapproving looks sent my way, and I pretended I didn’t hear the whispering behind my back. Some people—the ancient broth
er barbers at the barbershop, the real-estate agent who I guessed was the plump woman’s husband, the Eileen look-alike at the florists—told me they knew who I was and were curt, if not downright rude, when they said they didn’t know anything about the man who had been murdered before I was born. A few—the gum-snapping, middle-aged bottle blond at the cash register in the grocery store, the bored cigar smoker at the candy store that featured more pinball machines than treats, the straw-hatted, sweaty-faced owner of the non-air-conditioned hardware store—allowed that they did, in fact, remember Mr. LaSalle (although they all spoke of him as the Frenchman), but said they knew nothing about him other than he should have picked better company—in fact, he should have stayed in his own country. If he had, he might be alive today.
By lunchtime, I had canvassed one side of the main street and learned absolutely nothing of value.
I headed back to Maggie’s and found her in the parlor with Arthur, discussing what needed to be done to repair the damage done by the fire. I made lunch for them and helped Arthur carry all the furniture out of the parlor. Then I packed up all the knickknacks and carried them out. One wall was badly scorched and had to be re-drywalled. The carpet had to be taken up. Fortunately, the floor underneath had sustained only superficial damage, and that wouldn’t be noticeable once Maggie bought new carpet. I washed the walls and floors while Arthur measured and made notes and finally drove off in his truck to pick up supplies. By the time he returned, I had done all I could do, so I went back downtown and canvassed the rest of the businesses. My stomach was rumbling by the time I’d finished. It was too late for supper at Maggie’s, so I went back to the diner. The young waitress was gone for the day and had been replaced by an older woman with scarlet lipstick and a beehive hairdo, who took my order for a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a glass of iced tea. I ate alone in one of the booths. It was nice to be by myself and have time to think. By the time I’d finished, it was dusk. I started back to Maggie’s, a fifteen-minute walk.
As I crossed the street, I glimpsed myself in a store window. That’s when I saw about a dozen people crossing directly behind me. They were all male, and most of them were older than me. They were all grim-faced. I paused to let them pass, but they didn’t. They stopped and stared at me. It was creepy. I turned and started walking again, faster this time. I didn’t look back until I had reached the bottom of Maggie’s street. I didn’t have to. I heard their footsteps behind me. My heart raced. They were following me. But why? I fought the urge to break into a run.
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