The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Have you ever had vertigo?”

  “No.”

  “It’s horrible. Everything spins.” She sighed. “And I had to come back and hear about this fraud.”

  “It didn’t do much for me, either, if that’s any help.”

  “Not much.” Another sigh. “Well, stay out of it. That’s a direct order. Finish the work on the report and leave this trash alone. It’s already gotten us more bad publicity than the Comite Diversion Canal. And when the next contract comes up for bid—”

  “It’ll be a black mark.”

  “Yes.” She sounded surprised. “Of course.”

  I told her goodbye and gratefully replaced the receiver.

  “Marilyn …”

  She came in with her head a fraction less jaunty than usual.

  “What is it, Alan?”

  “I wonder how Bertha found out I went to Tennessee.”

  She blushed and looked at the floor.

  “I forgot to tell you. She called while you were in Tennessee.”

  “And?”

  When she spoke again I could barely hear her voice: “I guess I let it slip.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Sorry. It was a bad day. The Mahatma hadn’t shown up for work and my computer crashed and—”

  “Okay.” My turn to sigh.

  “By the way, Rosemary Amadie called before you came in. She wanted to know if you’d looked at the arrow points she brought in.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t thought about the point collection since she’d brought them.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said you’d have them classified for her and something written up by the end of the day.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “The Mahatma is on one of his lemonade fasts, so he can’t work in the field. I thought he could go through them quickly. She’ll be happy and—”

  “Get him on it,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’ll tell him when he comes in.”

  “He isn’t here?”

  “He called and said he’d be a little late. There was a ceremony at the ashram last night and he stayed up chanting.”

  “Call him again and tell him his next incarnation may be something even lower than an archaeologist if I don’t see him here in half an hour.”

  “Yes, Alan.”

  That settled, I called James Fellows, the archivist at the Hill Memorial Library.

  “Do you remember anything much about the Fabré Collection?”

  “Jesus, Alan, everybody is asking about that these days. This is horrible. To think that we had forgeries in here. Now I have to reexamine the entire body of documents.”

  “You won’t be the first archive that’s been hoodwinked, James. But I was interested in anything you could remember about who might have catalogued the collection for old man Fabré before he donated it to the university.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. Because that’s the person who would have been in the best position to commit the fraud. But, you see, that was before my time. Humphrey Elliott was the archivist then. And he died two years ago.”

  “Great.”

  “But I’ve been looking at the collection and the catalogue notes and I’ll say one thing.”

  “What’s that, James?”

  “Whoever did it was extremely meticulous and very knowledgeable. His—or her—notes are excellent and everything is in order.”

  “Handwriting?”

  “Typed. I’d say on a manual typewriter of some kind. One that needed work. The e’s barely hit the paper and the letters needed cleaning. I guess an expert could figure out which brand.”

  I thanked him and rang off.

  Somebody had typed the archiving notes, on a manual typewriter. And then, just a few years later, had developed sufficient computer literacy to be sending E-mail.

  Not impossible by any means. Except that the archivist had almost certainly been a middle-aged person, to have developed the kind of historical background information necessary to impress a stickler like James Fellows. And a middle-aged person who wrote with a manual typewriter wasn’t likely to have suddenly abandoned it for a computer.

  So where was this going?

  I was still staring at the phone when it rang again and Marilyn told me it was “that woman.”

  Thank God.

  “Pepper …”

  “Who?” I didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, confused.

  “Alan? This is Sarah Goforth. I wanted to apologize.”

  My spirits fell as quickly as they’d risen.

  “Oh.”

  “I know. I’m probably the last person you want to talk to. And I understand. Really.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I said some things I didn’t mean.”

  “We all do sometimes.” I was trying to think of a way to hang up without being rude.

  “The fact is, I was in a rotten marriage for ten years. A professor-type who thought I didn’t know anything and knocked me around when I tried to act like something besides a doting wife.”

  I waited for the punch line.

  “I guess I took some of my frustration out on you.”

  “It happens. Well, thanks for calling and—”

  “But I didn’t just call to apologize. We need to talk.”

  Of course.

  “I thought maybe if it was on the phone, you’d feel more comfortable. I know I shouldn’t have come by your home.”

  “If it’s about the Lewis thing—”

  “It is, but before you hang up, listen to me. Please. Just give me two minutes of your time.”

  “All right.”

  “First, I’m cold sober right now. I want you to know that.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I’ll try to cut to the chase: I think I can say who’s behind all this.”

  “You mean …?”

  “The murder of the caretaker, Flowers, and the forgeries. They’re the same person. We both know that.”

  “It seems logical.”

  “He’s scared of being exposed. That’s the only thing that makes sense. He put this whole fraud together, over years, and now it’s coming to pieces, and he’s trying to protect himself.”

  “I’d thought about that.”

  “The will is a forgery, right? But there’s more than just the will: Now there’re the journals. When they’re disproved, the whole business will come tumbling down around this person’s head. Because there aren’t that many people who could have done something so elaborate.”

  “I agree.”

  “So it’s important to get the journals, right?”

  “Nick DeLage said he didn’t need ’em anymore. I assume he’ll send them back to his aunt.”

  “Wrong.”

  I didn’t like the sound of the last word.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because Nick is a money-grubber: As soon as somebody else says they want ’em, there’ll be a price, whether they’re forgeries or not. And second, there’s the killer.”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean even if Nick wanted to give them back, there’s somebody out there who won’t want it to happen. The journals have to be loaded with evidence against him.”

  There was no refuting her logic there.

  “The will was just a few lines long,” she went on. “It would have been a major project to forge, but nothing compared with the journals.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “The will required just some paper and ink. But for the journals the forger had to find the kinds of notebooks they were written in. Those books either had to be totally unused or else he had to find some way to erase what was already in them. I think he would have had to use blanks, because erasing would be messy and leave traces.”

  “I’m still listening.”

  “Since they don’t make daybooks like those anymore, it means this per
son had to search all over the country to find three similar ones dating from the same period. Now, he could have gone to antique shops, but it’s more likely he sent for some specialty catalogue, the kind that advertises antique letters, memorabilia, and famous signatures. And if he did that, somebody knows about it and may even have a record of the purchase.”

  “Don’t forget: That was years ago.”

  “Granted. And that’s a difficulty. It may not pan out. There may be nothing. But if somebody did order these books, he may also have ordered other things over the years. We could try the different places that sell this sort of thing and ask for any Louisiana customers.”

  “And if it’s a blank wall?”

  “Then we have to look at the journals themselves. This person has to have left some evidence of himself. It has to be almost impossible to forge three notebooks, pretending to cover over thirty years, and not make some slips.”

  A terrible suspicion was beginning to dawn …

  “You sound as if you’ve actually looked at these journals.”

  “I was wondering when you were going to get around to that,” she said. “The fact is, Alan, I have them.”

  Someone laughed in the lab room and I heard a chair scrape.

  “You what?”

  “I have the journals of John Clay Hardin.”

  I exhaled.

  “How in the hell …?”

  “I told you Nick’s a lech. Now how about lunch?”

  “Where?”

  “You know the Alligator, on Bayou Manchac?”

  “That’s a bar.”

  “It’s dark and there won’t be anybody around at noon.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I sat frozen in my chair for a few seconds, trying to gather my thoughts. I called Esme and told her about Goforth. After she’d snorted a little about the woman’s morals I asked the question that was really on my mind. “Have you talked to Pepper lately? She had some personal business to take care of,” I said, my chest tightening as I thought of it.

  “Her brother. I know. She called me right after she talked to you the other night. She was so afraid you’d take it the wrong way. But I told her you’d understand.”

  “Did you.”

  “Alan, it’s very important to her. This is something she has to resolve. Be patient.”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “Not if you love her.”

  I started to object and then shut my mouth.

  “It was a long way to drive at night,” I said finally. “I was worried.”

  “I understand. But she can handle herself. You have to trust her on that.”

  “Yeah.”

  When I hung up I got up from my desk and walked into the sorting room.

  The Mahatma was seated at the head of the sorting table with Rosemary Amadie’s collection in front of him.

  “Nice points,” he said, smiling. “Wanna lay your hand on one? You can feel the aura of the man who made it five hundred years ago.”

  “The only aura I want is from the handbook of types,” I said. “This afternoon. Done. Finished. Okay?”

  “No problem.” The Mahatma beamed his holy man smile.

  I was walking back into my office when the phone rang again.

  “Alan, it’s for you.”

  I went back into my office.

  Let it be Pepper. Please …

  I lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Graham? This is Dorcas Drew.”

  Dorcas Drew. I’d forgotten.

  “Miss Drew. Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Actually, I’m not. I’m very distressed.”

  “About what?”

  “What I’m going to tell you has to remain between us.”

  “I’ll do my best. What’s this about?”

  When she spoke again her voice was a whisper. “I spoke to the state archivist about the people who had access to the letter I mentioned.”

  “And?”

  “A great many people use the state archives. But this particular collection hasn’t seen that many visitors and the archivist remembers them all. Especially the ones who came back at least once.”

  My breath caught.

  “Came back?” I asked.

  “First they had to go through the collections and find a good document to switch, because the documents in the collection are numbered and described. You couldn’t just sneak in an extra one.”

  “I see.”

  “Once they’d found the right document to switch, they’d have to prepare a substitute, with the right paper and ink and handwriting.”

  “So they had to spend some time in the archives just to find a candidate.”

  “Exactly. And presumably to photograph it while no one was looking. I assume there was originally an innocuous letter by this Isaiah King. The forger would have gone home, developed his film, and rewritten the letter to include the business about the white man who lived with the Indians. Then he would have had to go back to the archives and substitute the false document for the original when no one was looking.”

  “A lot of trouble to go to for a document that isn’t exactly conclusive,” I said.

  “That’s the beauty of it: Seldom in history is one piece of evidence conclusive. It’s the weight of evidence. Bits here and there.”

  “Who looked at this collection more than once?” I asked.

  “Just two names,” she said crisply. “And you know them both.”

  My breath caught.

  “The first was Melville Freeman. Distinguished research professor at Harvard University. An authority on pre-Civil War America.”

  “I know the name.”

  “But I don’t think he’s the one we want.”

  “Why?”

  “He was working on a new biography of James Polk. Polk grew up in Columbia, as you may know. The archivist said he was looking for letters that might have mentioned Polk as a youth. That was his reason for looking at that particular set of documents. But there’s another reason, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “He died two years ago, quite suddenly. I understand his manuscript was in a very rough stage.”

  “And the other historian?”

  “The other historian,” she said in a level voice, “was Dr. Shelby Deeds.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It took a long time for me to answer.

  “Shelby Deeds?”

  “I know. It’s hard to believe.”

  “But Shelby was almost killed the other night. Someone tried to run him off the road.”

  “I can’t speak to that issue,” Dorcas pronounced. “But I do know that Shelby is an alcoholic. I’d thought he’d overcome the problem, but one can’t ever know.”

  “But why would he pull such an elaborate hoax? What’s the motive? Surely he knew he’d get caught.”

  “I couldn’t say. But alcoholics often don’t think coherently. They don’t always see the consequences of their actions. I was married to one for more years than I should have been.”

  “You?”

  “Does that surprise you, Dr. Graham?”

  “No, of course not. I just—”

  “Would it surprise you more to learn it was to Shelby Deeds?”

  I grabbed the arm of my chair.

  “What?”

  “I wondered if he told you. Well, it wasn’t a happy time, at least not the last years. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left. That was ten years ago. I came back here, where I was born. I cared for Shelby, but you can’t live with two different people.”

  “And you think he’s relapsed?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. But I don’t know.” She sighed. “All I can do is tell you what I found out and see that this document is examined for authenticity. Beyond that, the matter is out of my hands.”

  I thanked her and sat motionless for a long time.

&nbs
p; There was no chance of doing more work this morning. I would be stewing as I waited for Pepper to call, and stewing as I thought about the possibility that Shelby Deeds was behind this business. No, I couldn’t stay in the office. So I took a long drive on the River Road, wishing Sam was back, and knowing as I passed his house and saw it still closed up that he wasn’t.

  I took the long way back, following the bends of the River Road, asking myself what question I should be concerned with. I was within a mile of the campus when I glanced at my watch and realized it was twelve-thirty.

  Christ. I’d agreed to meet Sarah Goforth at the Alligator Bar at noon.

  I turned on my flip phone and called the office.

  “She called three times,” Marilyn told me. “She sounded upset.”

  “Damn. Well, if she calls again, tell her I’m on my way. I don’t guess there were any other calls?”

  “Just that woman,” Marilyn said. “She said to tell you she was all right.”

  Pepper.

  “Did she say when she’d be back?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t ask.”

  “I thought if she wanted me to know she’d have told me.”

  “Right.”

  I pushed the disconnect button and turned right, away from the river and alongside the veterinary medicine complex and the baseball stadium. I headed south on Nicholson, leaving the city behind and passing fields of soybeans and cane until I came to the parish line, about five miles south of the city. I knew the Alligator, of course. Years ago it had been a decrepit, wooden-frame hovel where beer was sold to the fishermen who used the landing at Alligator Bayou to go down to Spanish Lake, in the swamp. Generations of college kids had made their way to the Alligator as an excursion in local color. But a few years ago an environmentalist had bought the old bar, built a pavilion out back, and started to run boat tours as a way of publicizing the natural beauty of the swamp. They hosted weekend parties and had bands, but the decor hadn’t changed.

  It was on a gravel road outside the city, but there were enough people around to keep a lone woman from feeling too uneasy.

  I slid around the bend and straightened out a foot from where the road sloughed into the bayou.

  It was just ahead.

  Five minutes later I saw it, a boat landing on the right, and just beyond that a frame shack with a beer sign.