The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  So far, so good.

  Then I saw my Blazer.

  Both tires on the driver’s side were flat and its red surface had been sprayed with white paint. As I approached I saw that a piece of paper had been stuck under the windshield wipers.

  I plucked it off and held it up, my hand shaking with anger.

  The writing was in block letters an inch high, done with a black felt pen.

  I WARNED YOU ONCE.

  THERE WON’T BE ANY MORE CHANCES.

  EIGHT

  I spent the morning getting my car towed to a Texaco station just north of the university. Putting on four new tires would be no problem. But I’d need a paint job, which they didn’t do. They’d be happy to send it to a body shop, but I wouldn’t have it back until Tuesday.

  I shrugged and told them to do it, then walked the half mile to our office. I called my insurance agent. He took the information, told me to make a police report, and half an hour later I was standing on my office porch making a report to a bored-looking patrolman with a paunch. He took the information, but I knew the case would get priority just above a stolen bike, and there was a better chance of catching the bike thief.

  At ten-thirty I called Esme and asked if we could use her car. She agreed immediately and I asked her to swing by the office.

  As a precaution, I checked the copies of the Hardin journal, but they were still locked securely in my desk. If somebody wanted them, they’d have to get past our alarm.

  I sat back and closed my eyes. I kept seeing old Brady Flowers and his angry face.

  But this didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d do. People like Flowers were direct. If they were angry, they told you to your face. They didn’t wait until you were asleep and vandalize your car. And they sure didn’t slip into the campus computer lab and send you a threat by E-mail.

  It was the style of somebody like Nick DeLage.

  I was roused from my meditations by the sound of Esmerelda coming through the front door.

  We were halfway to Pepper’s when she started her routine.

  “So are you and Pepper done playing games with each other?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, Alan, stop pretending. Do either one of you think you can fool an old fool? I may be a Natchitoches blue-hair, but I’ve played all the games and I’ve told all the lies—to my lovers and to myself. Mr. LaFleur was the only man who could see through it all. Aren’t you a little old to still be pretending?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? Well, listen to your aunt Esme: A woman doesn’t care about age in a man. That’s your own stupid obsession. Pepper is crazy about you, but you’ve got her scared to death.”

  “Esme …” I squirmed in the seat, wondering if we was going too fast for me to jump out.

  “She’s scared you aren’t for real. She’s scared you don’t want her.”

  “Look—”

  “But most of all, she’s scared you’ll leave. She’s a lot more insecure than you think. She’s still working through some problems from her family life. You know how she grew up, her father going off to Vietnam and never coming back, then her brother disappearing—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  We were turning onto Delgado, the boulevard that led into Pepper’s subdivision, and the driveway to her apartment was just ahead.

  “What she really wants is for you to swoop down and carry her off.”

  She turned into Pepper’s driveway and I jumped out of the Gran Prix before she could protest. I loved Esme, but this was getting ridiculous.

  I raced up the stairs and was relieved when Pepper opened the door.

  Not that I’d expected anything bad to have happened to her, but you never knew.

  A few minutes later we were on the interstate, leaving behind the traffic that kept us a mere ten miles above the posted limit. Esme was a terror on the road. She collected speeding tickets like some women collect jewelry. But she also had good reflexes and the kind of Old South charm that got her a second chance from many highway patrolmen.

  I waited until we were out of the city and then told them about my experience last night.

  Pepper gasped and Esme’s mouth set in a grim line.

  “Alan, this is really rather serious.”

  “I had the same feeling, Esme.” I shut my eyes as she fit herself between two speeding eighteen-wheelers.

  “Someone could kill you,” she pronounced.

  I looked at the INFLAMMABLE LIQUID sign on the back of the tanker truck ten feet in front of us and nodded.

  “That’s for damned straight.”

  “I remember being threatened when I was in high school. A boy was insanely jealous if I looked at another male. He began to pester me and to make the most outrageous threats. I finally faced him down and told him I simply wouldn’t have it. He was broken after that. He joined the Army and I heard later he did quite well. In the enlisted ranks, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said and heard Pepper giggle.

  I tried to imagine Esme as a young Natchitoches belle, growing up in the late fifties, absorbing all the gentility of life in the oldest community in Louisiana and yet, at the same time, acquiring the steeliness that saw her through the death of a husband, subsequent graduate work, highly successful investments, travel, and, from what I could judge, a number of love affairs. But no man she’d met had ever measured up to the legendary Mr. LaFleur, the love of her life, who’d carried her off on a cloud of poetry and then dropped dead ten years later.

  “But one great passion,” she’d once confided, “is as much as anyone can expect in a lifetime.”

  Right now I was concerned mainly with not abbreviating my own time on earth. Maybe, I thought, my anonymous assailant had merely been warning me about Esme’s driving.

  It took just over an hour to reach the turnoff to Abita Springs, a tiny community in the pine woods. Before the Second World War people used to go there for the medicinal value of the waters. Today they go there to escape the caul dron of vice and violence called New Orleans, on the south side of the lake. A microbrewery produces a decent beer and the atmosphere is unpolluted by exhaust fumes. A good place for a man like Shelby Deeds to retire.

  We found a burger joint on Main Street and after we’d eaten, Esme pulled out the sheet of paper on which she’d written Deeds’s directions.

  “Poor Shelby,” Esme lamented. “I think he could have done well at Harvard or Stanford. Instead, thanks to his problem, he was stuck for his whole career at a state university.”

  “Esme, you sound like an elitist,” I said.

  “I never claimed to be anything else.”

  She slowed at a shell driveway and then turned in. Ahead was a low frame house with lots of windows, and a dark blue Buick Regal under the carport. In the yard was an ancient live oak, with a bird feeder hanging from one limb.

  A rubber welcome mat greeted us at the front door and Esme raised her hand to knock, then paused and turned to Pepper and me.

  “I adore Shelby, but he’s so tragic. You almost have the feeling he ought to be in a Eugene O’Neill play.”

  She knocked, and when the door swung slowly open I understood what she meant.

  The man in front of us was slight, not over five-foot-five, and he leaned on a cane. His khaki trousers and white suspenders gave the impression of old gentry, as did the maroon bow tie. But it was his face that demanded attention. With a drooping gray mustache and pools of sorrow for eyes, I immediately thought of William Faulkner.

  “Esme, it’s so good of you to come,” he said, giving the tall woman a kiss on the cheek. He took Pepper’s hand and said, “I’m charmed.”

  Then he offered me a hand and we shook. I noticed that his skin was soft and his fingers long and delicate, like those of a pianist.

  “Shelby, what have you done to yourself?” Esme asked, nodding at the cane.

  He gave her a sad smile.

  “When was the last time you wer
e up here, Esme? One year? Two? None of us is getting any younger.” He turned around and hobbled forward, motioning for us to follow him into the house.

  “You’ll have to forgive the study. It’s a little untidy, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Esme said.

  He led us down a hallway and into a large room that reeked of cigarette smoke. The room protruded from the rest of the house so that there were windows on three sides. Under the windows were bookshelves and two-drawer filing cabinets. The shelves were crammed with books of every description, some standing upright and others lying on their sides atop one another. Several accordion files were stacked on the floor. Against the center wall, just under a window, was a desk, and on it I saw an ancient manual typewriter.

  “Please sit down. Can I get you some iced tea?”

  “That would be wonderful,” Esme said, slumping into a cane chair and kicking off her sandals.

  Shelby Deeds nodded gravely. “I have it already brewed.” He turned to Pepper and me: “Would either of you care for some homemade tea?”

  “That would be fine,” I said, answering for both of us.

  Our host hobbled off and Esme shook her head.

  “Do you see what I mean about tragedy? He just exudes it. All old gentry are like that, but Shelby has it in spades.”

  Deeds came back with a tray, napkins, four glasses, and a glass pitcher. He poured gravely, saving himself for last, and then raised his glass.

  “Cheers,” Esme said. Pepper and I lifted our own glasses and Deeds raised his halfway.

  Esme sipped, eyes closed, and sighed.

  “What you’ve told me is very interesting,” the old scholar said finally, taking out a pack of cigarettes. “I can’t think of another situation quite like it.” He shook his head slowly from side to side: “A man from nowhere, who can’t remember who he is, and at the end of his life demands that certain papers be shown to the president of the United States. I’d say it was unique.”

  Esme smiled. “I knew it would appeal to you, Shelby.”

  “And it certainly does. Did you bring a copy of the will?”

  Esme delved into her shoulder bag and produced the piece of paper.

  “Of course you have other copies,” Deeds said, taking it and shifting his unlit cigarette to his other hand.

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” He studied the document for a long time, held it to the light, and then laid it down flat on his desk.

  “Amazing,” he muttered.

  Pepper and I looked at each other.

  “It means something to you, then?” Esme asked.

  Deeds shrugged. “I need to do more study. Would it be possible for you to leave it with me?”

  “Of course. That’s why I brought it.”

  “Excellent.” He lifted the paper again, as if this time he might see something he’d missed before.

  “Yes, it’s very suggestive.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  He ignored the question. “Might I borrow the journals?”

  I told him about Miss Ouida and how I’d had to make a copy.

  “We can copy the copies,” I said.

  “That would be of some value. But hardly ideal.” He sighed, got out a silver lighter, and lit his cigarette. “An historian always prefers to work with the original documents. But a good copy might be sufficient at this stage.”

  Esme leaned forward. “I know that light in your eyes, Shelby. You’re on to something. So how about telling us what you have in mind?”

  Deeds drew on his cigarette, closed his eyes, and exhaled. “Then you also know how much I hate making a fool of myself.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But let me ask you this, Professor Deeds: Does it seem likely that our man came from the East, or from St. Louis, or from the Natchez Trace?”

  Deeds turned his head slowly and fixed me with his doleful eyes.

  “If I’m right, I’d say all three.”

  Pepper made a little sound of surprise.

  “Care to elaborate?” I asked.

  The old man sat back, the sad eyes alive now with excitement.

  “What do you know about the Natchez Trace, Alan?”

  I frowned. “It was an old Indian trail that the government expanded into a wagon road back in the early 1800s. It went from Natchez to Nashville. I think the National Park Service has restored parts of it.”

  Our host forced himself up, hobbled over to his bookshelf, and extracted a volume.

  “As Esme may have told you, I threw some of the historical materials together a few years ago and wrote this book. It’s called The Old Natchez Trace. Got a few decent reviews.” He shrugged and Esme risked.

  “It won a National Book Award,” she said.

  “There wasn’t much competition that year,” Deeds said disparagingly. “In any event, the Natchez Trace wasn’t much more than a footpath until Thomas Jefferson decided the country needed a land route to unite the eastern states to the Mississippi River. He made treaties with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians and had the army start to widen the trail into a road in 1802. It wasn’t finished until 1809, and it served as a route for mail riders and travelers until the development of steamboats in the 1830s.”

  I nodded, waiting.

  “Alan, try to imagine how it must have been: miles and miles of nothing but a dirt track, twenty feet across, with trees leaning up from the sides, and no other white people in sight for days. Maybe an occasional party of Indian hunters appearing around a bend or at your campfire. When you came to a stream you had to ride across, unless it was one of the few with a ferry. Two weeks is what it took to get from one end to the other, but sometimes it took a lot longer.”

  “All I can say,” Esme pronounced, “is that it makes the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit sound good.”

  “And then there were the robbers,” the old man explained. “Gangs like Murrell and the Harpes, and Sam Mason, although, to be truthful, traveling the Trace was probably safer than walking through the New Orleans French Quarter after dark.”

  “Of course,” Esme quipped. “The robbers on the Trace didn’t have Uzis.”

  “Eventually,” Deeds went on, “people put up inns along the Trace, every couple of days’ ride or so. But these weren’t hotels like we think of them: They were generally a log cabin for the innkeeper and his family and another cabin for travelers. The innkeeper usually sold cheap whiskey and his wife cooked a meal of corn mush. Basically, all it amounted to was a roof over your head, a place to shelter your horse, and other human company.”

  “And Louis?” I prodded. “You think he was headed down the Trace from Nashville, then?”

  A tiny smile curled the old man’s lips. “No.”

  I shook my head. “Then I’m confused.”

  “Well, I don’t want to add to the confusion. Because it’s likely that my conjectures are wrong.” He gave another little head shake. “In fact, they almost have to be. I need more information. I need time. Then, I promise, I’ll tell you exactly what I think.”

  “You think there really was some kind of plot?” Pepper asked.

  Deeds sucked on his cigarette again, as if trying to decide how much to say. Finally he exhaled and looked from one of us to the other.

  “What do you know about Jamie Wilkinson?”

  Esme cocked her head slightly. “Do you mean General James Wilkinson?”

  Deeds nodded. “The same.”

  Esme shrugged. “As I remember, he was from Maryland, a bit of a prodigy. He was a doctor before the age of twenty, and in the Revolution he fought at Saratoga under Horatio Gates. After the Revolution he eventually ended up in New Orleans, as a general.”

  Shelby Deeds stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “There’s a little more to it. After the Revolution he settled in Kentucky, reenlisted in the Army, and entered into the Aaron Burr intrigue. He ended up betraying Burr to Jefferson, which covered him just in time, because there were some other rumor
s making the rounds about him.”

  “Such as?” Pepper asked.

  “That he was also on Spain’s payroll.”

  “Nice guy,” I said.

  Deeds chuckled. “Wilkinson was a slippery character. He managed to worm out of just about everything he was ever accused of, usually by blackmail and informing on his friends. The incredible thing was that in time he came to be the ranking general in the United States Army. He was the general Jefferson ordered to build the Natchez Trace, using soldiers.”

  “Of course,” Esme said. “Now it’s coming back.”

  “He was court-martialed several times,” Deeds went on, “but he was never convicted. Most historians think it was because it would have been too embarrassing to the administrations he served to have an important general shown to be a traitor and a thief. When Wilkinson turned on Burr, for example, Jefferson couldn’t afford to expose his chief witness, so he made him governor of Upper Louisiana and sent him to St. Louis, which was the territorial capital.”

  “Sent him as far away as possible?” I suggested.

  “Yes. But it was an important post. And after he ended his term as governor, he was stationed in New Orleans, with a large contingent of troops, many of whom died or deserted because he pitched camp in a fetid marsh south of the city.”

  “Incompetence or intention?” I asked.

  “A little of both. He was cheating his troops of their rations, feeding them substandard food, and pocketing the difference. In 1809 he was ordered to Washington to explain himself at a court-martial.”

  “But he was exonerated, wasn’t he?” Esme asked.

  “I wouldn’t use the word exonerated,” Deeds said. “But, yes, he was acquitted.”

  “What finally happened to him?” I asked.

  Deeds smiled. “He botched a campaign in the War of 1812 and left the Army in disgrace. He went to Mexico, got a Texas land grant, and died before he could do anything with it. But he does have a county in Mississippi named after him.”

  “Serves him right,” I said.

  “Well,” Deeds said, “that’s not the end of his story. Just after the Spanish-American war, an American historian went through the Spanish archives in Havana. What he found was secret correspondence from the Spanish government, dating to the first part of the last century. It proved what had been rumored in Wilkinson’s lifetime: that Wilkinson was on Spain’s payroll all the time he was an officer in the United States Army. Even while he was the senior general in the Army. In fact, he made a tidy sum from his reports to his Spanish contact.”