Southern Curses (Max Porter Mysteries Book 6)

by Stuart Jaffe

  Drummond frowned. “If we’ve got to cut out the usual methods, how do we find Dr. Connor’s corpse?”

  “We don’t. As long as Dr. Connor continues to be cursed, she’s out of commission as far as they’re all concerned. But they also know that she can become a substantial problem if caught by the other side.”

  Sandra nodded. “They’ll keep trying to find her.”

  “Yup. That means dividing their forces fighting each other, looking for us, and looking for Dr. Connor’s remains. It weakens and slows them both.”

  Maria said, “What if they find her?”

  A look of cold confidence filled Max’s eyes. “That won’t happen. One thing I’ve learned since moving down here — these people are terrible at research. I beat them every time.” He let his gaze fall on each member of the group. And then he had it — a plan. “Here’s what we’ll do. First, we stay in teams. Nobody goes off on their own. Sandra and Maria — you two need to research these curses. We need to know what Dr. Connor’s curse is and how to break it, what happened to me, and especially, what spell or curse Mother Hope needs Dr. Connor for and how it is supposed to work against Tucker Hull.”

  Sandra grabbed her keys. “Is that all? You want us to discover the secret to eternal life while we’re out?”

  “I didn’t say any of this would be easy. It’s just what we’ve got to do.”

  She bent over and kissed him. “No problem. We’ll come through for you.”

  “You already have.”

  She grinned and kissed him again. Max never wanted the kisses stop.

  “Okay, you two,” Drummond said. “I thought we were under some pressure here.”

  Max chuckled. He pointed to PB and J. “You boys are to follow our enemies — particularly Mother Hope and Cecily Hull. I want to know everything they’re up to. Where they go, who they talk to, everything you can. The more we know about them, the better prepared we’ll be. And that all rests on you two.”

  The boys swelled up. “You got it, Ghostman,” PB said.

  “Drummond and I are going to the library.”

  Jammer J’s eyes widened. To PB, he whispered quite loudly, “Is Drummond the ghost?”

  “Yeah,” PB said, putting his finger to his mouth.

  Max continued, “We can’t go to the library at Wake Forest. I’m a regular there and would be noticed. More importantly, Mother Hope’s guard, Leon Moore, works there. So, we’ll go to Thomasville.”

  Drummond asked, “Why Thomasville?”

  “They’ve got a small public library. It’s not a library I usually use, but they should have public access computers, so it’ll be perfect to do the research I need without prying eyes upon us. I know you hate libraries, but you’ll have to suck it up and deal with it this time.”

  “I can handle being bored. What is it we’re looking into?”

  “The letters Cecily Hull gave — ZSR ...” Max’s brain froze.

  Sandra touched Max’s knees lightly. “LH. The code is ZSRLH. This all sounds good, but I think you’re forgetting that I’m really better at cracking codes than you. Remember, I’ve done it before for us. Shouldn’t I be the one working on Cecily’s code?”

  Max’s mouth was open wide. “Not this time.”

  “Why not? You look strange. What is it?”

  “Because it’s not a code at all.”

  Chapter 10

  Before he could hit the books, Max had to wait. First, he had to wait for the night to pass. No library was going to be open at three in the morning. Everybody found a corner of the warehouse to curl up and sleep. The nights were cool in the spring, but comfortably so. Max put his arm around Sandra and kissed the top of her head as she nuzzled his chest.

  Once daylight arrived, he had to wait again. He needed a car. His was still at a body shop, and they had no way to pick it up without being noticed.

  PB solved this dilemma by stealing a car — a 2012 Honda Accord. One of the most common cars in the United States. “Don’t worry about driving around or passing cops or anything. I put different plates on her.”

  Max raised an eyebrow, and PB responded, “You didn’t think I survived on the streets being a choir boy, did you?”

  With Sandra and Maria off doing their research, PB and J left to follow their marks, and Max drove to the Thomasville Public Library. Drummond took the passenger seat the whole way, and Max wondered if the ghost did so just to annoy him. Especially because as compliant as Drummond was being about a trip to the library, Max knew that deep down, the ghost wanted to shout complaints the entire drive.

  The library was located next to a mortuary and across from a church. Not a promising omen. Inside, the building was open and airy, particularly for such a small library.

  I’ve been spoiled, Max thought. The library at Wake Forest University was enormous, but this one would suffice. The building had three main sections and the entrance was attached to the center section. Two islands — one at the front and one in the middle — provided the librarians with stations to do their work. The rest of the center section was composed of desks with computers or empty tables to work on. The section to the right housed the stacks. The section to the left had meeting rooms and an area devoted to children.

  Max plunked down at one of the last desks with computers. He spread out his notebook, pens, and coat so that nobody else would try to share the desk. On the computer, he brought up the search tools and typed a message to Drummond: THIS WILL TAKE TIME.

  “I know,” Drummond said, a bit more grumpy than Max had expected.

  WILL YOU KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR TROUBLE?

  “Are you serious? First off, I’m always vigilant about that kind of thing. Second off, you do realize you’re asking me to patrol like I’m being punished with guard duty.”

  THERE ARE PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL US!

  “No need to get dramatic. I’m simply putting the situation in its proper perspective.”

  PLEASE.

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  I DON’T THINK SO.

  “Well, I did. Implied it, at least. So get to work already. I don’t want to spend all day here, if I don’t have to.”

  With that, Drummond floated around the room, passing though pillars and walls as well as taking a few laps around the perimeter of the building. Max cleared the search bar and typed Z. Smith Reynolds.

  He hated that it had taken so long for him to glean the answer, but at least, he found it. After all, the Wake library was the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. ZSR. He encountered that letter combination at least once every week.

  Quite quickly, he found entries that filled in the other letters — LH. Turned out to be a famous singer, Libby Holman. Reading further down, Max knew he had guessed right about the letters. Libby Holman had been married to Z. Smith. She also was accused of murdering him.

  “Sounds about right for the way my cases go,” Max said to the computer screen. He often talked to his research, especially when he was deep inside it, and had learned long ago not to stop. The process helped him think.

  ZSRLH — Zachary Smith Reynolds and Libby Holman. Two famous people caught up in a murder. Max didn’t want to jinx himself, but he couldn’t help thinking that this should be easy.

  He spent a short time looking into Z. Smith Reynolds. Short because there was little to find. Most of the websites spoke of him in terms of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation — a charity organization set up after his early and unexpected demise.

  For Max, the lack of information was not surprising. His time with the Hull family had taught him how secretive the ultra-rich can be. The Reynolds family most likely thought they were controlling the information flow and protecting their name. But scandals and truths have a way of always coming to light. Eventually. That was what the Hull family never wanted to accept. They could erase all traces of family members from books and articles, but in the end, something always slipped through.

  In the case of Z. Smith Reynolds, the truth came out through his
wife because while Smith lived a short life, Libby Holman lived a long and thrilling life. One strange and exciting enough to garner two biographies by respected journalists and numerous entries and articles on the Internet — plus, recordings of her music on YouTube and plenty of photographs all throughout the digital world.

  The more Max read, the more he became convinced that the Hulls had written ZSRLH on that file to focus on Libby. She had been living in New York City in the 1920s, doing all she could to break into show business. Singing was her main gift. She had a deep, raspy voice that seduced listeners and earned her a place on both the radio and Broadway. Her version of “Am I Blue” charted into the top ten and her song “Moanin’ Low” became a huge hit. Doors opened and she stepped into a lavish, unconventional life.

  Her antics behind-the-scenes became legendary. She slept with men and women like a modern-day rock star, and her beauty never seemed to fade — even after a long night of illegal drinking. Even the fact that she was Jewish did not seem to darken her star, despite it being the 1920s.

  As often as the spotlight found her, however, nothing could prepare the young starlet for the attention that would turn her way when she caught the eye of Z. Smith Reynolds. The youngest of four children to RJ Reynolds, Smith struggled to find his place in life.

  “Must’ve been hard,” Max said to his research. “The older kids all made Papa proud. But not you.”

  Many expected for Smith to be a trust fund baby — aimless and content to live off the financial teat of the Reynolds family business. But he wasn’t aimless at all. He fell in love with flying. Aviation was still new, and for a brief time, aviators grew to legendary status. Smith gained quite a bit of fame for his abilities in the cockpit. While his feats landed him in the newspapers, little of it impressed his father.

  One night, while in New York City for fun, Smith stumbled into a night club and heard Libby Holman sing. She was older than him by several years, but that meant nothing to him. He was smitten.

  As for Libby, she wasn’t interested.

  But Smith persisted, and over time, he won her love. The family, however, did not share his enthusiasm. They never embraced her — her heritage may have contributed to that — but at least she was financially independent. They could never legitimately claim that she sought the family fortune because she made more money than Smith.

  Love led to marriage. Marriage to Libby, especially surrounded by a huge fortune, led to wild parties and embarrassing newspaper articles. Yet despite their cavalier behavior while most suffered through the Great Depression, the public loved the couple.

  “Until it all changed,” Max said.

  It happened after the July 4th party of 1932. Reynolda House — the large Reynolds estate that bordered Wake Forest University — had been the scene of a raucous evening. Smith and Libby had a gaggle of friends over to drink and celebrate. Alcohol flowed, people danced, and many found excuses to walk off together into the woods.

  But during the party, Smith acted rather morose. He showed little interest in the festivities and spent much of the time avoiding most of the people. For a while, he wandered about searching for Libby. Nobody knew where she had gone.

  Staying at the house with Smith and Libby were Albert Walker, Smith’s childhood friend who worked for him as a personal assistant, and also Blanche Yurka, a lovely actress from New York City. Finally, there was W. E. Fulcher, the groundskeeper and sometimes night watchmen. That night, after the revelers had all left and the houseguests had gone to sleep, Fulcher walked around the building and saw the shameful way the house had been left.

  Empty bottles of alcohol, trash, food, broken glasses — one could easily mistake the scene for the remnants of an end-of-the-year frat party. Libby and Smith seemed to think somebody else would come along and clean it all up. Fulcher knew they were right. As he roamed the property, he heard the gunshot snap, and the world slipped from under him.

  Libby and Albert came thumping downstairs, crying out that Z. Smith Reynolds had shot himself. Along with Ms. Yurka, they carried Smith outside and placed him in the back of a car. Careening through the streets, Albert drove to the hospital as fast as possible for a car in 1932.

  With everyone covered in blood and acting hysterical, the hospital staff had a hard time piecing together what had happened. Over the hours, however, the story developed that Smith was drunk and angry. He argued with Libby, claiming she had taken up an affair with Albert — he swore they went into the woods together — and he would not live like a cuckolded fool. Libby tried to reason with him, but Smith put the gun to his head and fired.

  “Except it won’t be so cut and dry,” Max said as he wrote down the main points of the story.

  Indeed, the tale Libby presented began falling apart quite rapidly. At the hospital, Albert had stated that he heard a gunshot and came running into the porch bedroom; however, Libby said that she met Albert in the hallway. Ms. Yurka seemed to agree with both accounts.

  Things became stranger when the oddly named Sheriff Transou Scott attempted to investigate the crime scene. All inquiries into the shooting met stiff resistance from Reynolda company men. When Sheriff Scott asked to see Libby or Ms. Yurka for questioning, he was told they had both been heavily sedated and were unable to come downstairs.

  This caused Scott to push harder. He wanted to search the porch bedroom for the murder weapon. The Reynolda men refused to let him up. Eventually, they had no choice since their lawyers could only obstruct for so long. Yet when Sheriff Scott finally made it upstairs to the bedroom, it had been cleaned up.

  Three times, the room was searched for the gun allegedly used by Z. Smith. Three times, they came up empty. Later, however, the Reynolda men convinced Scott to look once more. This fourth time, the gun was found sitting in plain sight.

  Max wrote furiously, his hands trying to keep up with the thoughts in his head. Clearly, the Reynolda men covered up whatever had happened, but Max suspected they didn’t know themselves. They only knew that the boss’s son was dead and the wife was in a bad position — all of which had to be kept as quiet as possible. Of course, they knew this would hit the papers, but ideally, it would be a sensational story for a few days that would then wrap up as a tragic suicide. Even back then, some people understood the importance of controlling the narrative.

  Except that pain-in-the-ass Sheriff Scott refused to accept their version of events. One of the big problems was that, even in 1932, the medical examiner was able to determine that the gun had not been pressed against Smith’s temple as described for his suicide. Instead, the weapon had been held at a distance and angle which suggested someone else had pulled the trigger.

  Adding to the circus, the coroner, Mr. Dalton, held a secret inquest at Reynolda House in which all the “evidence” was presented. A judge and all the requisite authorities were invited and partook in the proceedings — all except Sheriff Scott. When Scott learned of this, he blew up. But the excuse given was that only in this way could they respectfully handle the case without turning the Reynolds family into a gawker’s paradise.

  In the end, the inquest determined that Z. Smith Reynolds did not commit suicide but rather classified his death as a homicide. Thus, the inquest had the opposite result of what the Reynolda men had hoped. Perhaps. Because while a homicide kept the family tragedy hot in the news, it also pointed the finger directly at Libby Holman.

  Max suspected the situation was more complex and less nefarious. Reynolds was both a family and a massive company. With so many people and so many jobs that could be made or destroyed by shifts of power in the family, there were plenty of competing angles. More than any single person probably knew.

  While Libby was brought into court, the charges never stuck. All the evidence available could barely be called circumstantial, and all the evidence that could have been useful had been swept away under the careful control of the company men.

  As strange and harrowing as that entire experience had been for Libby, things did not c
alm in the years after. Her life would continue to be filled with odd tragedies. Max scribbled faster — noting dates and key events. The picture of her Shakespearian history formed in his head as he wrote.

  Drummond interrupted his work with a single, terrible word. “Trouble.”

  A police officer had entered the library. He had a muscular, fit look with buzzed hair and slim sunglasses worn backwards as if he had eyes on the back of his head. Leaning on the checkout counter, he spoke confidentially to a librarian — a mousy gal who seemed troubled by what the officer had said. Both of them paused to scan the library.

  Max ducked his head behind the computer monitor on the desk. “How could cops have found me already?”

  “They didn’t,” Drummond said. “Not you specifically. But maybe this guy stumbled on your stolen car.”

  “Great. Now what?”

  “Don’t get frazzled. You’ve been in jams before. You can handle this.”

  “Easy for you. You can pass through a wall. If they jail me, I’m not going anywhere.”

  The librarian walked into an enclosed section while the cop continued to search the floor with his eyes. Drummond said, “At least, this guy’s not moving. That suggests he’s not looking for you directly. But he might be trying to find anybody acting suspicious.”

  “You mean like a guy hiding behind a computer talking to an invisible ghost?”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  Max closed his notebook. He could not get back to work — too risky if they were wrong and the police officer was targeting him — but he could not stay hidden behind a computer monitor either. He tucked the notebook under his arm and walked amongst the stacks.

  Using the tall shelves of endless books as cover, he worked his way toward the front of the library. He would not be able to get out this way — the stacks were on the opposite side of the exit. If he tried to leave through the entranceway, he would have to walk right by the officer. However, he could remain hidden by the books and observe.