Micanopy in Shadow

by Ann Cook

  Brandy tucked her pencil and pad back into her bag. “Can we do anything for you before we leave?”

  “Might let old Tabby out, while I set the pot on the stove in the icebox. Reckon I won’t leave the cat in the house.” She pushed herself up from the chair and picked up her cane.

  Grant opened the door for Tabby while Brandy turned back to Mrs. Washington. “Mr. Wilson and I, we’ll be careful who we talk to.”

  But how could she? She didn’t know who was dangerous.

  Mrs. Washington took care of the soup, picked up a set of keys from a sugar bowl on the table, and began following them outside. She glanced at the road. “Reckon I be coming after you.”

  As they stepped out on the porch, Brandy pulled her jacket tighter against raw, moist air. The dog lifted his head, sniffed, decided they were acceptable to his mistress, and laid it again on his front paws. He raised his head again quizzically as his mistress closed and locked the door behind her.

  “Don’t reckon I want to be here when the word gets out I been talkin’,” she said.

  As she made her way slowly down the steps, the hound pushed himself up and trotted along behind her.

  “Will your own people still object?” Brandy asked, startled.

  “Not my folks, no.” She had reached her shabby truck and opened the driver’s door. Before she hoisted her skirt to step up behind the wheel, the hound drew its lanky legs together, sprang up, and scrambled into the passenger seat.

  Grant waited to turn his own ignition on until her old pickup coughed a time or two and the engine caught. Then Brandy settled back as he backed around to leave. “I guess hearing that other car worried her,” she said.

  He nodded. For several minutes they drove without speaking. When they reached the end of the dirt road, Brandy looked for the car they had heard. None was in sight. Maybe it took the other route. But Brandy felt uneasy as she watched Mrs. Washington’s own truck clatter off in the opposite direction behind them, canine and human heads bobbing in union.

  Grant noted Brandy’s frown. “I don’t think the danger is to her. We’re the ones who learned something new.” He glanced at Brandy. “You got an earful, all right.”

  Brandy felt uncomfortable knowing that Grant himself learned so much. She liked sharing only with John, and now with her grandmother. She answered carefully. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to any of it, especially the old lady’s tales about the Starks and the Irons—or about your own great-grandfather. It was all mostly gossip, and second hand, at that.” She stared out the passenger window as cloud shadows slid across the darkening pastures. “I need to sort it all out.”

  As Grant turned onto Route 225, a few drops of rain glistened on the windshield. He was silent with his own thoughts. Cattle still stood or lay under the outstretched limbs of live oaks, and the waters of Orange Lake still glimmered through the trees. But Brandy felt a sea change had happened in her knowledge of the case—if she could only figure out how to use the information.

  After Grant finally swung from Route 347 onto Cholokka Boulevard and parked before the café, he cut the engine. “So what do you do next?”

  “Find out what Zeke Wilson wrote in his reports about the revenue agent’s murder.” Brandy didn’t mention the bloodstain in Caleb Stark’s storeroom office, but she wondered if the Marshall included it in his record. “I’ve got a chance to look into Caleb Senior’s store records, too.”

  Grant opened the door into the misty half-light and came around to help her out. “I have another day off. I could pick you up in the morning and take you to check the marshall’s file.”

  “If you’ll prepare your grandfather and Aunt Liz.” Brandy was unsure of Grant’s motives, but she’d be glad to have his company again—and so would John.

  “Their bark is worse than their bite, you know.” That wasn’t what she heard from Kyra. Grant glanced up at the lighted windows. “I’ll wait for Kyra.”

  At 5:00 P.M. Brandy hurried into the living room. Kyra had already given Brad his bath and his dinner and was lifting him, squirming and giggling, out of his high chair. When he saw her, he squealed, “Mummy! Mummy! I ated my din-din!”

  Brandy reached for him and snuggled him in her arms. Her lips brushed his warm cheek. “Grant’s downstairs,” she said.

  Kyra picked up her jacket from a kitchen chair, but hovered. “Was it, like, a good interview?” Brandy knew she hoped for at least a brief report.

  “Yes, very. Grant heard the details.” Telling about Ada still seemed hazardous and Brandy felt loyal to Mrs. Washington. But she knew Grant would tell Kyra what he’d heard. “I wouldn’t talk to anyone but Grant about it,” she added. Even as she spoke, she knew such a request might be useless. What young woman could resist sharing gossip—even eighty-one year old gossip—if it involved the town’s prominent families in domestic abuse and murder?

  John was the one Brandy wanted to talk to.

  As soon as he walked through the door, hung up his leather jacket, and lifted Brad high in the air a couple of times, Brandy drew him into the kitchen.

  While she described the interview, she thrust two frozen turkey tetrazzini dinners into the microwave and began chopping up a tomato, onion, and asparagus for a fresh spinach salad.

  “It must’ve felt good to the old lady,” she added, slathering French bread with garlic butter and shoving it into the oven. “That is, reporting the sins of white employers to another white person. For decades they lorded it over Mrs. Washington’s family and friends.”

  John set the table, nodding from time to time in sympathy.

  Brandy considered, then rejected telling John someone might have followed Grant’s pickup. If that were true, it meant someone had been watching her. But nothing had happened and the car might not have been following them at all.

  John sat down at the table, then looked up, earnest. “Just don’t forget your promise.” When she gave an almost imperceptible nod, the conversation turned to the Irons house. “We’ve reproduced the original craftsmanship, especially in the parlor,” John said. “I’ve re-installed moldings in the corners. Moldings are usually crooked in old houses, and it isn’t easy getting the angles to make tight joints. We soaked the trim to make it bend around the bow window.” He set his fork down and leaned back. “It’s an elegant house. Irons is a lucky man.”

  * * *

  That evening, while John drove into Gainesville to shoot a few games of pool with friends, Brandy called her grandmother and summarized what she learned from Mrs. Washington.

  “You’re still making progress, Brandy,” Hope said. “It worries me. Don’t go anywhere alone, and don’t talk to anyone else about that interview.”

  “Forget it,” Brandy said. “What Mrs. Washington knows, Grant Wilson knows, too—and Kyra Gibbons soon will.”

  Brandy set down the phone, led Brad into the bedroom and read Goodnight Moon to him twice. She let him point out all the colorful pictures until he grew fussy, then slipped him into his sleepers and settled him into his crib with his cuddly glowworm. She spent the next two hours summarizing the interview in her notebook and responding to her own correspondence and e-mail. She had been relieved to find a check from Florida Living Magazine for an article on the Seminole Ah-Tah-Thi Ki Museum off Florida’s Alligator Alley. It also accepted another about historical homes in Apalachicola, and an encouraging response came from the magazine section of the Orlando Sentinel, interested in her query letter about the history of Micanopy. She hadn’t exaggerated to the young clerk at the drugstore after all.

  John came home about 9:30 and grumbled. “I was lousy again. Not enough practice. These guys are sharp.” He didn’t spend much time on the newspaper before disappearing into the bedroom. By the time Brandy tiptoed in herself—careful not to wake Brad—undressed and slipped into her nightgown, John already lay in bed. “I�
�m still assessing what I learned today,” she whispered as she joined him.

  “Mrs. Washington told us a tidbit about your buddy Montgomery Irons’ grandfather. Apparently, he was a brute. Abused his wife—she of the steely jaw and eye. All I know about her is that she was charitable. She even befriended the Havens when Ada became their foster child.”

  “It was expected of women in her social class,” he said wearily.

  Brandy pulled up the covers. “A man can seem a saint to others and be a monster at home. The Starks separated. I haven’t learned anything about Ezekiel Wilson’s wife—or marriage. I’d like to remedy that.” She added a bit slyly, “It would shed light on the mores of small town Southern cultures in the twenties. Maybe there’s enough material for another book about Micanopy. A long article, anyway.”

  “I guess I could ask Monty some questions, though I don’t see the relevance. I’d rather do it than have you involved again.”

  “Might help,” she murmured. She was thinking about the Havens when John rolled closer. She felt his arms tighten around her and her gown loosen.

  For quite a while she forgot all about the Starks, the Irons, the Havens, the Wilsons, and even about Ada herself.

  SEVENTEEN

  At 8:30 the next morning, Brandy dressed in jeans and plaid shirt and waited for Grant, realizing she had neglected another of her grandmother’s problems. They hadn’t talked again about Snug. The deadline for selling Trinkets and Treasures would soon expire, and they had still heard nothing from Hope’s unreliable partner. Heaven only knew what he was up to, but it wasn’t selling antiques.

  Grant arrived promptly, bringing Kyra, who sprinted upstairs—statistics text in hand—and took charge of Brad, who had finished his oatmeal and applesauce and was ready to play. Brandy peered out the window, relieved to see the overcast sky had opened up, showing patches of clear blue and a few rays of October sunshine.

  “I’ll bundle him up a bit, and we’ll take a nice stroll,” Kyra said.

  Brandy tucked her notebook into her canvas bag, shouldered it, and gave Brad a quick kiss. When he whimpered to go with her, he tugged at her heart but she left to join Grant downstairs.

  On the drive up U.S. 441 to south Gainesville and University Avenue, they chatted above the rattle of the pickup about the weather and his ranger’s work, but her mind was on Zeke Wilson.

  After Grant parked at the LaChua Trailhead, they hiked along the Gainesville Hawthorne Trail until they reached the opening in the vegetation on the left and cut across a grassy ditch to Savage Wilson’s concrete block house. From the front yard, they could see him seated in his favorite rocker in a heavy robe, a newspaper in his lap and a cup of coffee on the table beside him. The oxygen tank and coils of tubing rested behind his rocker. His eyes were on the Trail. Aunt Liz was not in view.

  “Morning, Granddad,” Grant said, opening the door for Brandy and stepping up into the porch. Brandy had forgotten how fragile the old man was, how hollow the sockets of his eyes. But they were as moist and lively as before. “We need another look at your father’s papers,” he added.

  The old man peered up at Brandy, silent and unsmiling.

  Once again, she pulled a plastic chair away from the wall and sat facing him, but not uncomfortably close. “I’m interested in looking at notes the marshall made about the revenue agent’s murder in 1921. I believe the case was never solved.”

  The suggestion of a grin flickered across Savage Wilson’s thin lips. “Damn liquor law commenced the year before. I recollect my daddy didn’t like to talk about the case much. Never could put nobody away for it. In a lot of ways, ‘shine made life hard on lawmen. ‘Low brush lightning,’ that’s what they called ‘shine hid out in the piney woods.”

  Grant had vanished into the house, and now returned, carrying the same plastic file box he’d looked into ten days earlier. He set it on the floor by another chair, seated himself, and began turning through the records. Grant had said the resourceful Aunt Liz organized them—a woman of unexpected talents. He soon found notes about the questioning of Caleb Stark, skimmed them, and handed the pages to Brandy. The notes included no reference to the bloodstain—a strange omission, Brandy thought. She handed the pages back and recorded the few details, then had a sudden thought. “Is there anything in his notes about Adrian Irons?” Grant would realize she was probing for an official complaint.

  The ranger thumbed through the alphabetized folders again. “You can bet there won’t be anything about wife abuse. Wasn’t even considered a crime then. A man could do almost anything he wanted to his wife.”

  Brandy nodded bitterly. “Wives were little better than property. They didn’t have the vote yet, so they couldn’t change things.”

  Both had almost forgotten the old man, but he wanted back in the conversation. “Danged if I don’t recollect something about Adrian Irons, and that’s the truth,” he said in his reedy voice. “When I was a young ‘un, Irons was a fine gentleman, lived in a big house at the edge of town. While he’d be off taking care of all his property, his wife went a-swishing around town in her fancy clothes. Mama couldn’t stand the likes of her. But Mama did say Mr. Irons treated her mean. Talked mean to her, never took her no place. But she was one independent female.” His grin exposed a set of brown, crooked teeth. “She was a big deal in women’s circles. When Mr. Irons got that big old four-door Oldsmobile, danged if she didn’t up and learn to drive it. After that, she’d take herself places. He couldn’t keep that woman down for long.” A smile lingered at the memory. He seemed almost to admire such a sassy female. Brandy hadn’t seen even a photo of his own mother. Had she also been a woman “hard to keep down?”

  But then he swiveled around to glare at Brandy. His tolerance didn’t extend to female journalists. “What you asking about them folks for? They got nothing to do with the Starks. Or,” he narrowed his eyes further, “your great-grandmama’s drowning.” He hadn’t forgotten why she came the first time.

  “Oh,” she said sweetly, “but I’m interested in what the whole town was like then. Local color, journalists call it.”

  Savage lapsed into another lengthy silence while Grant flipped through the remaining file folders. “Nothing here about the Irons family,” he said. Suddenly he halted. “Here’s something we didn’t see before. It’s a note about the Losterman drowning. It was stuck in a file about the Marshall’s responsibilities.” He pulled a yellowing sheet from a file and read aloud:

  “Had a terrible electric storm on the night of October 2. Lights went out all over the area, even in Gainesville. After the rain died down some, a neighbor near the Smith Street pond saw a light circling the north shore for several minutes; finally went out. Reported it to the Sheriff’s Office, but the investigating officer found nothing wrong in the area.” Wilson had added a notation. “Hard rain that night would’ve washed out footprints. The neighbor thought he heard a car stop and later start up again—couldn’t tell because of rain and wind.”

  “A curious development,” Brandy said, pulling out her notebook and jotting down the information. “I wonder if it means anything, coming the night after Ada drowned.” Of course, the Marshall could be covering his own tracks.

  The old man leveled a more benevolent gaze at Grant. His mind had reverted to the murdered revenue agent. He startled them by chortling. “’Course, some say ‘shine made right smart money for some lawmen.” Brandy stopped writing. She knew bribery flourished in Florida during Prohibition.

  “Papa was a smart cuss,” the old man continued with pride. “Never let no man put nothing over on him. I reckon, if he couldn’t make a case, he’d pocket the proceeds, know what I mean?” Brandy wondered if Wilson’s failure to note the bloodstain resulted from negotiation with Stark. Maybe if the marshall or the Sheriff’s Office didn’t have enough evidence to make the case, the marshall pocketed the proceeds to save Caleb further embarrass
ment.

  “I understand your father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan,” Brandy said matter-of-factly. The Wilsons would surely know how widespread such membership was in the past.

  Old Savage Wilson snorted, eyes dancing. “You bet your sweet life, he was. Done a lot of good, the Klan did in them days.”

  Brandy remained silent on the subject. Too late for a lecture on tolerance and justice. But she did have another request. She faced him. “I never saw a photograph of your mother,” she said.

  The old man shifted in his chair and ran a bony hand across his mouth. Finally he said, “Not many around. Mama was handicapped, you know. Caught that disease the president had later, what they called infantile paralysis. Came on when I was about six.” He glanced up. Brandy couldn’t read the look in his heavy-lidded eyes. “Never got out of a wheelchair after that, she didn’t. Didn’t want her picture took, of course.” He looked over at Grant. “Seems like Liz keeps an old album that’s got the only one there is, and it’s just a snapshot—except their wedding picture, of course. That’s in the album, too. Mama always kept it on her dresser. Reminded her, I reckon, of how she looked once—and Papa.”

  “Was she able to move to Tallahassee with your father when he was a state senator?”

  He shook his head. “She never wanted to see folks, I reckon. Stayed in their house in Micanopy. Nice big house. There’s a picture of it somewhere in that album, too.”

  “You say the album’s in Aunt Liz’s room?” Grant moved quickly to the doorway. He’d better hurry. If Liz returned, she’d never let them see it.

  He vanished into the house and Brandy heard him open and close a door. In fifteen minutes he emerged, leather bound volume under one arm. “It wasn’t easy to find. She had it under some blankets on a closet shelf in her bedroom.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat beside Brandy while Savage Wilson rolled his chair close enough to peer at the pages as Grant turned them. A black-and-white wedding photograph was pasted on an early page. The tall figure of Zeke Wilson stood a little behind his bride. Brandy noted again his high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and the angles of his face, all reflected in Grant’s.