The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  There was only a dented blue Ford Ranger out front.

  I pulled in beside it, got out, and hurried up the steps to the door.

  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the light. To my right was a wooden counter, but the stools were all empty. To the left were a pair of pool tables, where a lone man in a checkered shirt and a red baseball cap played against himself. The ceiling was papered with dollar bills, from past patrons who’d left their names and messages.

  It was no good. I’d missed her.

  “Help you?” The bartender, an elderly man with bifocals, appeared from the kitchen area, towel in hand.

  “I was supposed to meet a woman here,” I said. “She called half an hour ago.”

  “She left,” the barkeep said and went to work wiping the top of the counter.

  “A short woman, curly black hair, fortiesh,” I said.

  The barman gave a little nod.

  “She’s gone. You want something to drink?”

  “A Dr Pepper,” I said.

  Maybe if I waited a few minutes she’d come back.

  The barkeep went to a refrigerator, took out a red can, and handed it to me. I gave him a five-dollar bill and pocketed my change. He vanished from where he’d come and left me alone with the pool player.

  “Your girlfriend?” the pool player asked, a cigarette bobbing between his lips as he lined up a shot.

  “Not exactly. Did you see her?”

  “I seen her,” he said with a thick Cajun accent. “She was nervous.”

  I got up and went over to the pool table.

  “Buy you a beer?”

  “No, thanks.” His hands moved a fraction and the cue stick hit the white ball and sent it caroming against the far side of the table and then spinning back at an angle to collide with the nine ball, which disappeared into a corner pocket.

  “Nice shot,” I said.

  The man straightened. “She was in here two times, that woman.”

  “Two times?”

  He walked around the table, scoping out his next shot.

  “First time she sat at the bar, drank three vodkas. Straight. That was when she made the call.”

  “And then she left?”

  “Yeah, but she wasn’t too steady. I thought maybe she’d end up in the bayou. But she come back ten minutes later.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She was scared. Something scared her. Don’t know what it was. Didn’t ask. Figured it was a man. Husband, maybe. She was running away. Figured that out from the big suitcase.”

  “She had a suitcase?”

  He nodded and then squinted at me with brown eyes.

  “You not her husband, then?”

  “Not her husband, not her lover. Just a friend she called to meet her here.”

  He bent over, went through the motions of his next shot, and then thought better of it.

  “That woman, she’s in trouble.”

  “What did she do then?”

  “She made another call and went back to the bar, but this time she didn’t order nothing. That’s when I went outside.”

  “You left?”

  “Just outside,” he said, jerking his head at the parking lot. “Somebody was after that girl. I wanted to see if they was out there.”

  “And did you see anything?”

  “Couple niggers fishing.”

  “Then what?”

  “She left again.”

  “While you were standing outside?”

  “That’s right. She come out, got into this little car, and took off like she was a race car driver. I thought she was going into the bayou, but she straightened out.”

  “Which way was she headed?”

  “Left. Down the Bayou Paul Road.”

  The way I’d come. And yet I hadn’t passed her.

  “Thanks.”

  The man nodded and went back to his pool game.

  What now? There were a couple of turnoffs where she could have left the bayou road and headed south. Maybe if I retraced my route …

  I’d gone four miles on the gravel when I saw the sheriff’s car ahead. It was blocking the gravel road, its flashers on, and a man in jeans and a T-shirt was pointing down into the bayou as a deputy stood beside him.

  I stopped and got out.

  “Trouble?” I asked.

  “Car went in the bayou,” the deputy said. “You can get around me.”

  That was when I saw the car roof. Blue. A small car, like a Subaru.

  I felt sick.

  The deputy’s eyes were on me now.

  “We got an ambulance on the way. You know this car, mister?”

  “I don’t know. I was supposed to meet a woman at the Alligator.”

  “She drive a car like this?”

  “Same color,” I said.

  It was downhill from then on, mainly because the Subaru’s windshield had been shattered and the same shotgun blast had virtually erased Sarah’s face.

  They took me to across the river to Plaquemine and questioned me for two hours.

  It was seven-thirty before Dogbite made it down from Baton Rouge and convinced them that they didn’t have enough for an arrest.

  “Why does this shit keep happening to you?” he demanded, walking me to where they’d impounded my car.

  “It’s the patron saint of lawyers, making work for you,” I said.

  “St. Yves,” he said. “Every once in a while he comes through.”

  I thanked him and got into my car.

  A smart person would have driven back to Baton Rouge and let the law take its uncertain course.

  But I wasn’t feeling that smart. I drove back to the Alligator.

  The place was alive this time, with a couple of Cherokees and a Stingray outside on the gravel. Inside, six or seven college kids crowded around the pool tables. Frat boys with their dates.

  The man I’d talked to earlier hadn’t said anything about her having the suitcase when she left. It was a long shot but worth the try.

  But where would you hide a suitcase in here?

  Two women walked out of the restroom then.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but did you notice a suitcase in there?”

  The pair giggled and one, who was barely more than a girl, gave me a strange look.

  “That thing is yours?”

  “My wife left it,” I said. “Would you mind …?”

  “Sure. It’s in the way.” She looked at her friend and giggled some more. “You can’t even get to the toilet.”

  She went back through the door and returned a few seconds later lugging an old-fashioned tan suitcase with three stripes.

  “This it?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Funny place to leave it,” the girl said and the pair started giggling again.

  I carried it outside and thrust it into my Blazer, then headed right, toward the interstate. But before I got there I pulled off onto the side of the road and opened the piece of luggage.

  They were there, all three of them: The journals of John Clay Hardin.

  I was probably breaking all sorts of laws. But the journals didn’t belong to the police, or to me, or even to Nick Fabré. They belonged to Ouida Fabré and I was sure I was doing what she would want.

  It was the kind of decision that made Dogbite gnash his teeth.

  I took the suitcase home and there, in the privacy of my study, with Digger on guard in the hallway, opened it again and took out the journals.

  They looked the same as before, which didn’t surprise me. I hadn’t really expected that anyone had pulled a switch. I placed them on the little antique desk left me by my father and leafed through them, page by page.

  I went through the early years, my eyes stopping, inevitably, at some of the more interesting entries.

  Whoever had forged the journal had done a masterful job of reconstructing the daily life of a plantation owner in the first half of the last century. There was nothing so spec
tacular, on the one hand, or so glaringly out of place, on the other, that anyone but the most competent document examiner would suspect a fraud.

  But, then, maybe that was because it wasn’t. Maybe it was because what I was reading in the first journal and even the second was genuine—the thoughts and observations of John Clay Hardin.

  Why forge three journals if you already had two? Maybe the mysterious forger had stumbled on the journals and realized their potential. All he—or she—would have to have done was forge a third volume. And the third volume was the one with the least amount of material.

  I turned to the third book and opened it, staring hard for some evidence that my theory was right. I took a magnifying glass out of my desk drawer and, under my desk lamp, searched for the telltale cracks in the faded brown handwriting.

  There were none.

  Well, maybe I needed a microscope. I could take the journals to the office and examine them there with one of the scopes we used for looking at artifacts.

  Then caution asserted itself: I wasn’t an expert on questioned documents. I was an archaeologist. This was something best left to an expert.

  But what expert? It was Shelby Deeds’s expert who had said the will was forged, and everyone had gone along with it. But now Shelby was under suspicion, and if he was suspect, what did that say about his expert witness? The man had been introduced to me as Flinders Mott, an authority on forgeries. But what did I really know about him? I, as well as everyone else, had been taking Shelby’s word that the man was who he said he was.

  Then sanity grabbed me back from the edge of the abyss: Flinders Mott hadn’t invented those cracks in the brown letters. And the document he’d showed us for comparison hadn’t had them.

  But the comparison document had been one he’d provided.

  There was only one way to know: I would have to send the journals away.

  I called Dorcas Drew.

  “I need to send you something,” I said and explained about the journals, leaving out the death of Sarah Goforth. “Whoever is going to look at the letter you found in the archives can probably make a determination of the journals. The owner is okay with this. But I have to know if these journals are forgeries.”

  “Send them to me in the morning,” she said. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I know something.”

  I hung up and turned back to the last journal.

  I remember Father said he had papers in an oilskin when he was found by the river & how he looked at them & made no sense, so left them & afterwards the papers disapered.

  We were back to the mysterious lock box.

  Why would someone fabricate the story about the lock box? To increase the value of the land itself? But all that was in the box were some papers and the elder Hardin had been unable to read them.

  Unless the journals—or this portion of them—had been forged to deliberately mislead. What if the box contained something of intrinsic value, like gold or a treasure map? What if the real journal had been doctored somehow to make the contents of the box seem unintelligible?

  It was necessary to find the box, if it existed. But that required knowing more about the plantation itself and its original layout, and Esme had already dug through all the known archival material.

  Then my eye fell on a little book perched on the edge of my bookshelf. I’d forgotten about it ever since bringing it home from the office. It was Adrian Prescott’s Great Homes on the River: Sketches of the Plantation Past.

  I thumbed through it and found the selection on Désirée. It was concise but well written. I checked the publication date: 1987. I didn’t know who Adrian Prescott was, though the flyleaf listed him as a native of East Baton Rouge Parish whose avocation was history. Maybe tomorrow I could find him, if he was still alive, and see if he could offer any suggestions.

  Anything was better than standing still.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The next morning I went to the office early and, after wrapping the journals in brown paper, put them in a mailing box. Then I secured the box with plastic tape, addressed it to Dorcas Drew, and drove to the post office, where I sent it by Express Mail. I checked our box and found, to my relief, a brown government envelope of the kind checks come in.

  I got back to the office just in time to be at my desk when Marilyn arrived.

  Before she could begin I handed her the brown government envelope, like a cat presenting its master with a bird.

  Her little face relaxed and she actually smiled.

  “I was starting to get my résumé together,” she said.

  “So is there anything pressing?” I asked.

  “Is that a way of saying you’re taking off again?”

  I told her about the murder of Sarah Goforth, leaving out any mention of the journals.

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. “Alan, how do you get involved in these things? Do you mean there may be policemen here today? What will I tell them?”

  “Tell them I’m out on business but I’ll be back.”

  “And if the murderer comes instead?”

  “Keep the doors locked.”

  “Thanks.”

  I reached into my pocket for my keys. None of the lab crew had shown up yet, but I saw Rosemary Amadie’s projectile point collection arrayed on the sorting table, a small card next to each item, with the type of point, geographical area, and dates.

  The Mahatma could do good work when he focused on his current incarnation.

  “And if that woman calls?” Marilyn asked.

  “Tell Pepper I’m fine and to hurry back,” I said. “But you don’t need to say anything about the murder.”

  I left quickly, because I knew that it was only a few minutes before the cops or the media or both came for more details. And I couldn’t make any progress if I was sitting in an interrogation room.

  I went home, circling the block to make sure nobody in an unmarked car was waiting for me, and finally parked out front and went inside. I retrieved the little book by Adrian Prescott and checked the phone directory for a listing.

  Seventeen Prescotts, but not an A. or an Adrian.

  I drove to a shopping center not far from my house, where the publisher had offices. It was a local company that specialized in subsidy works on local themes, and once in a while a really valuable reference work resulted. I went up a narrow set of stairs between a pet store and a pharmacy and found myself in an office overflowing with books of all kinds.

  A woman with graying hair and bifocals looked up at me from her desk beside the stairwell and asked if she could help.

  “Do you know Adrian Prescott?” I asked, showing her the little book.

  She examined the volume carefully, as if she were evaluating its construction, then laid it down on her desk, face up.

  “This was published before I came here,” she said. “Mr. Herman may know about it, though. Did you want to order copies?”

  I told her I was looking for the author, and she got up without another word and disappeared into the back.

  There was a morning paper on her desk, and I wondered if she’d gotten to the part about the body found in Bayou Manchac, or the local man questioned about the crime.

  The woman reappeared two minutes later, leading a giant with gray, tousled hair. Wearing blue jeans and a red-checkered shirt with suspenders, the giant reminded me of a clean-shaven Paul Bunyan with rimless glasses.

  “Herman Dugas,” the giant said, smiling and sticking out a huge hand. “You’re interested in Adrian Prescott’s book?”

  I mumbled my own name quickly, hoping nobody read the paper that closely, and told him I was more interested in the author.

  Herman Dugas scratched his chin.

  “Mr. Prescott. Nice old gent. Seemed to know his stuff, but what do I know?” He chuckled.

  “I wanted to talk to him about one of the plantations he wrote about,” I explained. “But there wasn’t a listing in the phone book.”

  The giant nodded.

  “He was in b
ad health. He may have passed away.”

  The woman’s head jerked up, as if she’d known the author.

  “Then that’s the end of that,” I said, chagrined. I turned to leave.

  “Too bad. He was gonna write another book.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He was having trouble finding the money, though. I think he was trying to get some kind of grant.”

  “A grant?”

  “That’s what I remember.”

  “What was the book going to be about?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. It was history, of course. That was his thing. But he wasn’t a professional historian. I remember he was upset about that: He said you practically had to be a university professor to get any kind of research grant, no matter how good you were.”

  “And he wasn’t a professor.”

  “No. He was retired from the state. Used to be an accountant. He hated it.”

  “Do you remember what agency?”

  “Nah. He’d been retired five or six years when we did his book. I think he retired when his wife died.”

  “Did he have other family?”

  “Some kids, I think. But I never met ’em.”

  “Could you do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Could you check your records and see what address he left?”

  The woman looked offended. “We can’t—”

  But the giant was unfazed. “Don’t see why not. Haven’t heard from him for a long time, but we ought to have something.” He folded his big arms across his chest.

  “Come back just before four-thirty. I got a few other things to do, but I ought to have time to look it up by then.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  I left the office, got into my Blazer, and headed back down Stanford toward the office.

  An idea was taking shape. I didn’t know its full implications or how it would emerge, but my unconscious was telling me to pursue the lead. If Adrian Prescott was working on another book, and if he’d wanted to get a grant for research, then maybe he was the man who’d archived the Fabré papers. And that meant that maybe he was the man behind the fraud.

  My chain of thought was shattered by the wail of a siren and I looked into my mirror to see flashing blue lights.

  Oh, Christ. What had I done, forgotten to signal when I’d turned onto Morning Glory?