“Could we find out who bought the Felony Bay property?” I asked.
“Unfortunately I can’t disclose anything about business matters we handled for one of our clients,” Custis said.
My face fell. “Then how can we ever find out?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Custis went on. “Fortunately for you, it’s a matter of public record.”
“Who do we have to ask?”
He stood and held up a finger. “Just sit tight. I think you should be able to get it off the computer.”
He grabbed a pad and pen from his desk and walked out into the hallway.
Martha brought our Cokes while we waited, and then after another minute Custis was back. “I just had to get the parcel number for Felony Bay,” he said as he walked around his desk and typed a few words. He waved us over. On the screen I could see a page called County Tax Records.
“Like I said, it’s public information.”
He hit the Enter key, and a second later the property description appeared: twenty riverfront acres on Leadenwah Island. It showed the appraised value and the annual taxes. The owner’s name was something called Felony Bay Land Company, LLC.
“What’s Felony Bay Land Company?” I asked.
“Probably an investment partnership,” Custis said. “Real-estate developers often use names like that.”
“That sounds about right to me.” I told him how Bee and I had seen Bubba Simmons using one of those excavating machines on the beach and about all the holes he had dug.
Custis considered this for a moment. “Sounds like it could be a developer testing to see if he could put some septic systems in, but from what you’re describing, those holes are way too close to the water to be the foundations for houses or anything like that.”
“Why else would they be digging those holes?”
Curtis smiled. “Did your dad ever tell you the old stories about Felony Bay?”
“You mean like how pirates and blockade-runners used to hide out there?”
He nodded. “There’s one particular story about the Lovely Clarisse.”
I thought for a moment and shook my head. “I don’t think Daddy ever told me that one.”
Bee and I sat down again as Custis leaned forward in his chair, like he was telling us a secret. “The legends say that during the Civil War, a blockade-runner named the Lovely Clarisse tried to sneak out of Charleston Harbor loaded with a cargo of gold and cotton. The Union navy, which was blockading Charleston Harbor to keep supplies from going in or out, spotted the ship as it sailed out under cover of darkness. In the pursuit and ensuing battle, the Lovely Clarisse was badly damaged, and her captain steered her into the shallow coastal waters south of Charleston—eventually, folks say, into the Leadenwah River and right into Felony Bay. Having survived the battle but needing more extensive repairs than could be managed in the small bay, the captain decided to offload his heavy gold to make the ship as light and fast as possible. He and his officers supposedly buried the gold somewhere along Felony Bay and then set out once again to sneak past the Union navy. They were unsuccessful, and the Lovely Clarisse went down with all hands about fifty miles off the South Carolina coast.”
Bee and I shared a look. Custis paused for a moment, then continued. “When news of the sinking reached Charleston, the Confederate army dispatched crews to the area around Felony Bay to try to recover the buried gold, but they were never successful. Other treasure hunters tried after the war, but they didn’t find anything either, and in the intervening years most people have come to assume that the stories of the Confederate gold were just tall tales.”
“Did Uncle Charlie ever hunt for the treasure?” I asked. “Daddy said he did a bunch of treasure hunting before I was born.”
“A number of years back, he apparently became obsessed with the Lovely Clarisse treasure. When your grandfather was still alive, he even tried to get him to deed Felony Bay over to him.”
“How come Daddy never told me?”
“You know that he and your uncle Charlie never got along.”
I nodded.
“Since you have only one uncle, I think your dad was trying not to make things worse than they already were.”
“Do you think Deputy Simmons was digging for treasure?” I asked.
Custis shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, but it sounds possible. Maybe the property was bought by a developer who thinks he’s going to get paid twice—once when he finds the gold and again when he sells the land.” He made a note on his legal pad. “I’ll sniff around and try to learn more. No guarantees. If it’s public information, I’ll be able to tell you, but if it’s not, I won’t be able to divulge it.”
I nodded, knowing better than to object. Daddy had always told me that one of the most important things a lawyer does is protect the privacy of his or her clients. “How much do you think they paid for the land?”
“Based on the assessed tax value, I would guess maybe around two million dollars.”
“And you said Mr. Barrett handled it?”
Custis nodded. “And he’s the firm’s senior partner . . . at least until your father comes back.”
“There are a few more things we need to know,” I said.
“Okay. If I can tell you.”
“Was Uncle Charlie the real-estate agent?”
“That’s certainly not private information,” Custis said. “I’m pretty sure he was. I know he listed Reward, so I assume he also listed the smaller parcel. I’ll check to make sure.” He made another note.
I tried to think of other questions Daddy would have asked. “When real-estate agents sell property, don’t they do write-ups to describe what they’re selling?” I knew they had done it for Reward Plantation, because I had seen a copy of a fancy brochure.
“Yes.”
“Was there a Felony Bay brochure?”
“I’ll find out.” Custis nodded as he jotted that down. “What else?”
I thought about how to express my next question, but I also knew that Custis wasn’t going to like answering it.
I chose my words carefully. “If Daddy had decided that Felony Bay belonged to Mrs. Middleton, and if he was right, then wouldn’t it have been like stealing for people to have sold that land to somebody else?”
Custis sat back and thought for a long moment. “Wow,” he said at last. “You really are your father’s daughter. The honest answer is that I don’t know the answer, but I’m inclined to say no. Your father was operating on a certain moral perspective, not necessarily a legal one. The fact is that Mrs. Middleton moved off the property some years back, and so technically her claim under heirs’ property was no longer valid.”
“From what you said before, she got driven off because Uncle Charlie charged her too much rent.”
Custis nodded. “But the fact that she moved off is still the primary issue. Your father was doing something because he thought it was the right thing, but it certainly wasn’t anything he had to do in a strict legal sense.”
I thought about that. Then I nodded to Bee and stood up. “Thank you very much for your time, Custis,” I said.
I was disappointed at some of the things I had learned, but I couldn’t really be angry at Custis or Mr. Barrett. I understood that Mr. Barrett had probably had no choice but to sell every single bit of Reward in order to repay Miss Jenkins. He probably didn’t know that Daddy was maybe going to give the land to Mrs. Middleton. He only knew that the Felony Bay property was worth two million dollars, and that he and the other lawyers needed the money. I also realized that Custis wasn’t going to make himself any friends and might even get himself in big trouble with the firm’s other lawyers if he started digging into things like this.
However, I did not work for Force & Barrett. I was going to push as hard as I could.
“I’m going to try and find out exactly what happened here,” I told Custis. “I need to know what my daddy was planning to do when he broke up the land, and if I can prove that he was goin
g to give it to Mrs. Middleton, I’m going to try and make sure that’s what happens.”
He looked at me and smiled. “If there’s any twelve-year-old in the state who can do it, it’s got to be you.”
“How soon do you think you might be able to get us the answers on those other questions?”
Custis raised his eyebrows and thought about that. “I’m pretty busy, but I ought to be able to get them in the next day or two.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded. “Just for the record, Abbey. I’ll help you, but if you make this thing a big problem for our clients and for the firm, I won’t be able to talk to you anymore. At least on anything that concerns Felony Bay. It doesn’t mean I don’t personally support what you’re doing, and it doesn’t mean we’re not friends. It’s just professional. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. For the first time ever, I felt like Custis and I were going to have to be careful about what we said to each other.
Twelve
After we left Custis, we walked up State Street, past the old brick houses of the French Quarter, through the market, and onto Anson Street. We turned onto Pinckney Street just past a barn where big carriage horses were being harnessed to a wagon, and we ate lunch in a little white house called Cru Café that has maybe the best French fries in the whole world. Unfortunately I wasn’t very hungry.
I was pretty sure I understood at least part of what was going on, and every single bit of what I understood made me angry. It seemed obvious to me that Daddy had been working to get Mrs. Middleton her land back before his accident. But considering everything that had happened since then, I was starting to wonder if the two could be connected. If they were, it was tough to figure out where to start. We had run into a wall, and to get around it we would need more help than Custis could give us. I knew he didn’t want to break any lawyer rules, and he didn’t want to get himself in trouble with Mr. Barrett. I really couldn’t blame him.
Neither Bee nor I had spoken much during lunch. We were about to ask the waitress for our check when Bee finally let out a sigh and asked, “How much more can we really do?”
I looked up from playing with my French fries. “Daddy always said you have to dig and get the facts. He said until you have the facts, all you have is an opinion, and that opinion is only worth something in a newspaper.”
“Where do we get more facts?”
“The Library Society.”
Bee looked suspicious. “Sounds boring.”
I shrugged. “No getting around it,” I said. “Just like lawyers, we have to do our research.”
We walked over to King Street and headed south. I saw Bee slow down several times when we walked past stores with windows full of bright fall clothing. I could tell she wanted to go in and look around, but I kept urging her along. The last thing I wanted to do was waste my time shopping when I barely had a dime to my name.
We finally came to the rambling headquarters of the Charleston Library Society. Daddy told me it’s the second oldest private library in the United States, established in 1748. They have lots and lots of old books, and many of them are all about Charleston and the South Carolina Lowcountry. Bee and I asked one of the librarians to help us find information relating to Confederate blockade-runners, rumors of buried treasure, and also heirs’ property.
She walked us around to different parts of the collection and helped us gather a stack of books. She also gave us a couple notepads to make notes. I offered Bee the books on blockade-runners and treasure, because I thought they would be more interesting, while I took the heirs’ property stack.
A couple of hours of reading the dry-as-dust books about heirs’ roperty convinced me that I had guessed right about which books would be boring. I had to put my fingers up against my eyelids to keep them open, while across the table Bee kept oohing and aahing as she read about Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet and other pirates who had sailed the waters around Charleston, and then she oohed and aahed even louder when she read about the Lovely Clarisse and other tales of buried gold.
“Abbey,” she whispered at one point, her eyes glittering with excitement. “It says the captain of the Lovely Clarisse sailed her into a ‘secret bay’ when he buried the gold.”
“Sounds like they’re talking about Felony Bay, doesn’t it?”
Bee nodded, her eyes large. “Isn’t that exciting?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s just a story. People want to believe it, but it’s too good to be true.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t matter if it’s real. It just matters if the people who bought Felony Bay believe it, right?”
She had a point. I nodded and went back to my boring book.
The one thing I discovered out of all the gobbledygook about heirs’ property was that most of the cases where heirs were given legal ownership of their properties had been based on the idea of “continuous occupation.” If somebody moved off the property and later tried to claim it, their claims were usually refused. Unfortunately it looked like Custis was right. Without someone willing to give the land to her, Mrs. Middleton’s right to Felony Bay likely wouldn’t be honored.
I was falling asleep for about the fiftieth time when Bee kicked me under the table. “Look at this!” she said. She had six or seven different books spread out on the table, all of them opened to the inside cover, where the library glued its little envelope that showed who borrowed a book and for what dates.
I looked at all the books and shook my head, unable to understand. “What?”
“Look! Every one of these books has been borrowed by Charles Force. That’s Uncle Charlie, right?”
I shot up and grabbed the first book and slipped the card out of the envelope. It showed that Charles Force had borrowed the book about ten months earlier. I went from book to book, checking the cards, and they all showed the same thing and roughly the same dates.
“I didn’t know Uncle Charlie could read,” I said.
“Weird, huh?” Bee said.
An idea that had been circling around in my brain started to take a little more shape. It horrified me and at the same time made me so angry, I could hardly see straight.
“Is it possible that Uncle Charlie bought Felony Bay?” I asked.
Bee shrugged. “That’s what I’m wondering.”
The idea didn’t make any sense, because Uncle Charlie never seemed to have enough energy or money to do anything. Just looking at his falling-apart old pickup or Ruth’s rusted Toyota, it was hard to imagine that he could have scraped together a couple million dollars to buy twenty acres of riverfront land. The same thing was true even if Deputy Bubba Simmons was in on the deal as well.
Bee looked at her watch. “It’s almost three o’clock. Time for us to meet Grandma,” she said.
We took our books back to the librarian and thanked her for her help, then walked out of the library, sat on the steps, and waited for Grandma Em. It was hot, the sun still high in the sky, and I could feel sweat starting to trickle down my back. After a minute an old red pickup truck rumbled by. I only noticed it because it had a busted muffler and sounded strangely familiar. There was an open parking place just past where we were standing, and the truck pulled up and backed into the spot.
The side windows of the truck were down, which must have meant the air-conditioning was broken along with the tailpipe. I glanced toward the truck, and with no reflection to blur my view, there was no mistaking that the driver was Bubba Simmons. Bee and I were high up on the steps, and Bubba was busy getting into his parking place, so he hadn’t noticed us.
I grabbed Bee’s arm and pulled her all the way to the top of the steps. We tucked in behind a stone urn, where we were mostly out of sight. Bubba finished parking and turned off his engine, but he didn’t climb out. Instead he turned toward his passenger. I couldn’t see the passenger or understand what they were saying to each other, but I knew it had to be an argument, because I caught scraps of Bubba’s angry voice as it drifted through the open window.
Bee and I leaned out from around the urn to get a better view, and we saw Bubba take his right hand off the wheel and start to slap his passenger. We stood a little taller and moved all the way to the side of the steps until we were literally hanging over the railing. I could see Bubba’s passenger now, cowering against the far door. He was holding his arms over his head and trying to roll into a ball. Bubba’s slaps kept coming, and Jimmy Simmons’s voice came through the window begging his father to stop.
After a few more seconds, Bubba finally got out of the truck, looked back in, said something in a low, angry voice, then walked away. He never turned his eyes in our direction.
Several moments went by, and then Jimmy climbed out. Bee and I were still on the steps as he came around the back of the truck, and I could see rage and humiliation in his eyes and in the set of his lips.
Just at that moment he looked up and caught sight of us. His face was red and swollen as if he had been crying, and he quickly wiped his eyes on his sleeve. I saw something pass across his face when he looked at me, and even though I knew what it was, I didn’t feel angry. I watched him start up the library steps toward us, his face set in a scowl, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
“Do you know that kid?” Bee whispered.
“Yes . . . unfortunately.”
“Is he coming up here?” She sounded nervous.
“’Fraid so. Move away from me.”
Bee stepped to one side as Jimmy continued up the steps, his eyes never leaving my face. He was trying as hard as he could to look mean and scary, I’m sure because he thought if he could frighten me like his father had done to him, then he might feel better. I stood my ground but glanced around, hoping there would be other people on the sidewalk and their presence might keep things from getting ugly. Unfortunately there was no one nearby.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Jimmy said in a soft, sinister voice when he got close. His nose had a scab on it, and I was pretty sure it was from my fist.
The Girl from Felony Bay Page 9