The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  I switched off the television.

  It really wouldn’t help to kick anything.

  I went to sit in the backyard, away from the telephone. I didn’t really want to have to commiserate with Esme or Marilyn or David, and I was afraid that the one person I wanted to talk to wouldn’t call.

  Digger’s barking shook me out of my thoughts.

  I turned my head: He was staring at the back door, which meant he’d heard somebody was at the front.

  Pepper.

  I let him in and he rushed to the front, still barking. I stopped in front of the big front door, took a deep breath, and looked through the peephole.

  A pug face, black curls, square figure. And my spirits fell.

  Sarah Goforth.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I started to leave her on the doorstep, but curiosity finally got the better of me and I opened the door.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I don’t blame you for being pissed,” she said and I smelled alcohol. “Can I come in? Don’t worry, I don’t have a hidden camera.”

  I scanned the street, then shrugged and stepped aside.

  “Nice place,” she said and plumped onto the sofa.

  “So why did you come?” I asked.

  “I came to say I’m sorry.”

  “Really.” I stared at her. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about the goddamn story, of course. Meriwether Lewis and all that.”

  “I saw the five o’clock news,” I told her. “It doesn’t sound like there’s any more to say.”

  “That’s what the damn station manager said.” She screwed up her face. “‘There isn’t any more to it.’ Cut. Finis. End.”

  “Well, he’s right.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “He just fired me.”

  I frowned. “Oh?”

  “He said I drink.” She looked around. “You got a bottle here somewhere?”

  “Forget it and tell me what all this has got to do with me.”

  “What it’s got to do with you is that you’re saying all you know. I asked around about you, Dr. Alan Graham. And there’s a couple things hit me in the eye. First, you’ve got a doctorate from Arizona State and excavation of a major site in Central America. You know your shit. Second, you’ve been involved in murders before. There was that Tunica business last year. You managed to solve that one. Third, you have a reputation.”

  “A reputation?”

  “You don’t ever back down when you think you’re right and there’s an important issue at stake. You’ve taken some big risks. You turned in a bunch of developers who were wrecking an Indian Mound in Iberville Parish, even though they were putting pressure on every politician in the state. You’ve turned down bribes and you’ve ignored threats.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Go on and joke, but you know it’s true. Finally, you come from here and you feel like you’ve got a special interest in seeing things are done right.”

  I shrugged. “Or seeing they aren’t screwed up worse than usual, maybe.”

  “Ha!” She smirked.

  “What’s your point?”

  “If somebody pulled the wool over your eyes with this will and these journals, there’s a hell of a big story there for the right reporter. That’s the point.”

  “Who told you about the journals?”

  “Nick DeLage showed ’em to me. Before things fell apart. He’s got a few other family books and papers, but he doesn’t know what they mean.”

  “Original papers?” I asked.

  “No, the usual published stuff. They’re on his shelf where they can impress people.”

  “You’ve been to his house?”

  She smirked. “Once or twice. You have to put people at ease if they’re going to work with you. The man’s a letch.”

  “Is that what you’re doing here?”

  “I’m here to explore. Don’t you have any ideas?”

  “I only know that whoever put all this together went to a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s what I figure, too. So why don’t we find out together?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My press pass can get me into places you can’t go.”

  “You said you just got fired.”

  “I kept the pass.”

  “You want your job back,” I said. “Well, I can’t help you.”

  “Damn it, I need that job. And if I can get a good story, a new slant, show ’em they were wrong, I’ll get another job. And if this really is Meriwether Lewis buried over there, I want to be the one that breaks the story.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Damn it, I’m begging …”

  “I wish I could help.”

  She gave me a dark look, then wobbled to her feet.

  “You overeducated males are all the same. Just like my husband. Just because he had a doctorate he thought he could lord it over the rest of the world. And you’re no different. Look at this place: It looks like a damn museum. You don’t even have a woman, do you? Well, enjoy your pitiful little life.”

  She wheeled and bolted through the door, weaving her way down the sidewalk to the street. She got into a dark blue Subaru and shot into the street, nearly hitting a minivan and driving up onto the boulevard divider.

  When she’d blundered into my office I’d been angry with her, but now I only felt pity. People under pressure could be driven to do a lot of things.

  The ringing phone brought me out of my thoughts.

  Please let it be …

  “Alan?” My heart jumped: It was Pepper’s voice.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, breathless.

  “Fine. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, your place was ransacked …”

  “I got the door fixed. I’m okay, really. And I’ve got good news: Fitz talked to the lawyer the court appointed for Miss Ouida and the lawyer called DeLage about getting the journals back. Fitz is over here now and we were going over things.”

  “Oh.”

  “Nick was pissed, but he said he didn’t care at this point. It was all a hoax and he didn’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Have you and Fitz eaten?” I asked hopefully. “I could bring a pizza.”

  “Not in this football traffic.”

  “Oh. I forgot. You’re boxed in.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Look, when the game’s over—”

  “I’m turning in,” she said. “But I have an idea. Can you come by tomorrow at about nine? I thought maybe if we drove down to New Orleans for the day …”

  I shrugged to myself.

  It was better than a sharp stick in the eye.

  “Sure,” I said. “New Orleans it is.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I picked her up at nine Sunday morning and we drove to New Orleans.

  A good change of scene, she’d convinced me. We’d take the day for ourselves and forget everything that had happened.

  It didn’t work, though, because we both kept thinking of the man buried at Désirée. So we made the rounds of the zoo and the Quarter and got back to Baton Rouge at just after five. Pepper rushed off to visit Miss Ouida with the news about her journals. I went home and saw my message light blinking on the answering machine.

  I groaned. What else could go wrong? I pressed the playback button and heard a woman’s voice.

  “Dr. Graham, this is Dorcas Drew. There’s something you may be interested in. Would you give me a call?”

  Dorcas Drew? The naysayer of the Natchez Trace? What could she have found out that would interest anybody now?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it at this stage, but she’d taken the time to call me, so it was only polite to call back.

  There was no answer. I took Digger for a walk, and when we were done I showered and called Pepper.

  “So how’s Ouida?” I asked.

  “Better. She’s excited at the idea of having the journals back. But
I don’t like that Krogh woman. She kept hovering around, like she was trying to listen in on everything.”

  “She probably was. She’s Nick’s pipeline.”

  “Alan, listen, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  My chest tightened. I didn’t like the tone of her voice. “What?”

  “You remember I told you last year that the final postcard I got from my brother came from Monroe, Louisiana?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, it was from the Holiday Inn there, one of those house postcards they put in every room. When I first came to Louisiana I went to the Holiday Inn and showed them the card and my brother’s picture and one of the clerks remembered him. He promised to call me if he ever saw him again.”

  “And he called?”

  “A half hour ago. Alan, I’ve got to go.”

  “I’ll go with you. That’s a five-hour drive and it’s pitch-dark.”

  “No. I appreciate it, but I’ve got to do this myself.”

  “But you’re tired. You’re not in any state to drive on those two-lane roads.”

  “I’ve got to do it. I’ll be okay, believe me.”

  “Is your brother staying there now?”

  “I don’t know. The clerk just said he’d seen him in a restaurant this morning. He was sure it was the same man. That means he may be staying somewhere in the area at one of the motels. I checked at the Holiday Inn and there’s nobody registered there by his name. But if he’s in the area, somebody might know something about him, whether he’s a truck driver, what line or route, or whatever.”

  There was an almost manic tone in her voice now, something I hadn’t heard before. I didn’t like it. It was telling me that there were facets to her life that had been so totally hidden from me that anything might jump out.

  “I’d promise to stay out of the way,” I said lamely.

  “No, thanks. I’ll call from Monroe. I promise.”

  “Holiday Inn?”

  “If they have space.”

  Silence while I groped for words. And in the end all I could come up with was, “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Pepper …” I’d better say it now.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, and the line went dead.

  I stared at the phone, helpless. There was nothing in the world I could do to change her mind. Her brother was her only link to her past. It was important to her that she find him, or at least make the effort. And I was only a spectator.

  But I couldn’t just stand and wait. So I tried Dorcas Drew again and this time I got her.

  “I’ve done a little more research,” she told me. For some reason I thought her voice sounded a little less sure than it had before.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “But I’d better tell you there’ve been some developments on this end, too.” I explained about the forged will. “So it looks like the whole thing was a scheme, and who this Louis really was, I don’t know, but it seems less likely he was Meriwether Lewis, the explorer.” I took a deep breath. “In other words, you were right.”

  But instead of a cluck of triumph there was a moment of silence.

  “Someone went to a great deal of trouble,” she said finally.

  “I know.”

  “I wonder …”

  “Yes?”

  “No. It’s impossible.” I could imagine her shaking her head in decision.

  “What is it, Miss Drew?”

  “It’s a letter I found in the state archives. I thought it was genuine, but now …”

  “What does the letter say?” I asked.

  “I’ve copied it. It was from a schoolteacher in Maury County, to a judge living in Columbia. It’s dated 1825 and it has to do with the history of the removal of the Chickasaw Indians to Oklahoma after their lands were ceded to the United States. Of course, the Indians had been moved out by that time.”

  “Go on.”

  “The writer, an Isaiah King, says, and I’ll quote, ‘There were, living among the Indians, certain half-breeds, who cause trouble, and until recent years there was a white man, reputed to be deranged, who was cared for by one of the chiefs, because the Indians are very sensible regarding such infirmities, and this man, whom the Indians had cared for since he had been brought to them wounded some years before, was regarded as an object of religious awe. It is said he vanished several years ago, and it is commonly thought he died of his wounds or was murdered by other Indians. I got this story from a half-breed man named Joshua Kettle who lived in a village about two days’ journey from the Swan River and, in his youth, remembered seeing this red-haired man in the Indian camp.’” She coughed. “He goes on to talk about other things then.”

  A red-haired man, wounded …

  “Of course,” she continued, “it could have been anybody. And this hardly counts as historical evidence. It’s the rankest kind of hearsay. But I thought you might find it interesting, because it’s the only thing remotely akin to evidence that I’ve been able to find that would substantiate your theory.”

  “Except that now the theory is bogus,” I said.

  “Yes. Which leads me to wonder whether this letter, too, has been planted.”

  “Planted for somebody to find,” I surmised.

  “Exactly.” Another silence. “But this really is all very hard to understand. The amount of forgery, the sheer complexity of it …”

  “I know. But, like you said, your letter may not really have anything to do with Lewis at all.”

  “No. But what I thought was interesting was that it developed a mechanism.”

  “A mechanism?”

  “I mean that one of the main drawbacks of your theory was explaining how Lewis would have dropped out of sight after Grinder’s Stand and then reappeared in your state. From this letter, it appears possible that someone could have been hidden out with the Indians. I don’t say it happened. I simply state that the letter raises an interesting possibility I hadn’t thought about.”

  “Nor had I.” I considered for a few seconds. “So what now, Miss Drew?”

  “I’m a friend of the state archivist. I intend to have this letter examined for authenticity. And I also plan to see if there are records on anyone else who may have looked at these particular archives in the last few years.”

  “Will you let me know what you find out?”

  No answer.

  “Miss Drew?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I heard … Well, no matter. What was it?”

  There was a clear tone of distraction in her voice.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I heard a noise in the next room. Silly. I’m alone and the door is locked. It must be Trifle.”

  “Trifle?”

  “My cat.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow night if I don’t hear from you first,” I said.

  “That will be fine. Dr. Graham …”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  The line went dead.

  I didn’t like it. Her voice had been different, preoccupied. Or was it just that I was on edge myself and was projecting my own anxiety onto her?

  The only way to ease my mind was to call her again. If things were all right, she’d answer. And I’d think of some question I’d forgotten to ask.

  But this time there was no answer, even after the phone had rung ten times.

  Calm down: She probably just stepped outside, I thought. The cat was knocking things over and she put it out. Sure. No need to panic.

  But the tone in her voice …

  An old lady who carries a gun is probably scared of lots of things. She heard the cat, the cat scared her …

  Dorcas Drew didn’t seem like the kind of woman to jump at shadows. And if there was a prowler, that big magnum of hers is a lot of protection. Anyway, it’s really Pepper you’re worried about. Give her ten minutes and then call again. She’ll probably answer then.

  I paced for five minutes and then called after six.
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  This time the line was busy.

  She’s there. Everything is cool. Case closed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  On Monday morning I made my way into the office nearly an hour late after waiting around to see if Pepper would call. When she didn’t I called the Holiday Inn in Monroe, but they didn’t have any record of her.

  Maybe she was staying somewhere else.

  She’d be okay. At least she was far away from killings and forgeries. I should be glad she was safe.

  I took a sympathetic call from Marvin Ghecko, clucking that he knew I’d had nothing to do with any forgeries, and he wanted me to know this wouldn’t affect his esteem for me. I thanked him and was glad to get off the phone. He wasn’t a bad guy, and, since being confirmed as State Archaeologist last year, he’d been a whirlwind of activity, but knowing that didn’t help. When he was finished I got the long-awaited call from La Bombast, and this one made me cringe.

  “Do you mean you’ve been working on this thing, even made a trip to Tennessee, on project funds, and didn’t tell me?”

  “None of that trip was charged to the project. You always tell us to get background. That’s what I was doing, Bertha.”

  “And didn’t tell me.”

  I took a blind leap of faith and crossed my fingers: “I called and they told me at the office you were sick.”

  Silence. “Well, I was, as a matter of fact. Vertigo. I was on my back for three days.” Her tone had softened appreciably. “So you really called, Alan?”