These hats bobbled up and down the street working hard to avoid the mud puddles that blanketed the street from a week of rain. Life was down there, and he wanted to be there. Not here in this room with the dead.
The living mesmerized him so deeply that at first, he had not heard it. But it got louder. Jeffrey turned his attention away from the window and toward the grunting sound which came from his father’s bed. He walked slowly to the bed. Jeffrey looked down to see his father’s brown eyes staring at him wildly as if he had just returned from a dark place. “Jeffrey,” Elijah Peterson croaked.
Jeffrey stood still, afraid to move for a moment. Brown eyes bulged and his lungs fought to take in air. His hands were paralyzed at his side, and if anyone had walked into the room just then, they’d remark about his unusual paleness.
A million thoughts ran through his brain in quick fire succession. The doctors had assured him that his father was in a deep coma and would not make it through the night. He had relied on that information – planned heartily off of it. His father’s death was the key to his future, he had felt. And now – he was awake?
“Jeffrey,” his father whispered again, and this time, he tried to lift his finger to gesture for Jeffrey to come closer.
Jeffrey saw the gesture his father made and hesitated to obey for a second; perhaps he was seeing things, the chemicals from the relaxer having affected his brain somehow. But then he bent over more out of curiosity than deference to the man who had helped to give him life. “Yes, father,” his voice squeaked.
“You … your mother …” he stared blankly at the wall behind Jeffrey and then went into a coughing fit for a few seconds. Jeffrey waited for him to stop, never thinking to offer his father the glass of water that sat on top of the table near his bed.
“Mother is dead, father,” Jeffrey said after the coughing stopped.
Elijah looked at Jeffrey with a small effort of determination in his eyes. “A letter … she wrote me ... a letter ‘fore she … she died.” He rolled his head to the side in exhaustion.
The hairs on the back of Jeffrey’s neck stood up as he straightened his back. “What was in it?”
Elijah turned back to face his son. Tears started to roll their way down Elijah’s grey, worn out face and his body began to convulse from his attempts to not cry. “You … you killed those women, didn’t you?”
A smirk appeared on Jeffrey’s now dry lips as he pushed his shoulders back and inhaled deeply. “You’re dreaming, father. Go back to sleep,” he ordered, a coldness sitting on top of his voice.
Elijah attempted to put his hands up as if to silence Jeffrey as he did when he was a child. But another round of coughing fits seized his body before he could say what he desperately wanted to get out. Finally, the coughing subsided and he continued, “Yes … she said she knew about them, Jeffrey. What … what have you done?”
“Go to sleep father,” said Jeffrey as he searched the room frantically with his eyes to find something – anything – that would shut his father up. “Someone might hear your wild story and believe it.” He saw what he needed then to shut Elijah up permanently.
Elijah watched his son with his eyes as Jeffrey took a pillow out from under Elijah’s head and held it over him. “Son, what have you done?” he pleaded as he tried in vain to lift up his hands to ward off what was to come.
“Nothin’, father! I have done nothin’,” he shrieked as he squeezed the pillow.
Elijah cried some more. “Son!” he called as he reached out a hand to touch him, but Jeffrey recoiled and hissed at him.
“Why should you care now about me? Both of you! You never once thought about me. Mother and her damned church! You were too busy doing your charity work to notice me! Ha! But now—”
“Jeffrey!” his father cried out to him.
“No! You saw that woman every Friday for years … and the others you’d see throughout the week. You think I didn’t know? That no one knew? The great honorable scholar! I watched you, followed you for years,” Jeffrey snickered.
Elijah tried to speak again, but his voice had left him momentarily. Only his eyes spoke now and they screamed in panic.
Jeffrey was hysterical now, leaning viciously over his father’s body, but he kept his voice low so as not to bring anyone to the room. His brown eyes were all that betrayed his demeanor. They blazed over with anger. “That’s right! I watched you for years with those women. Home wreckers! That’s what women like that are! They deserve to die.”
“You ... are a … disgrace—” Elijah tried to say.
“No, father! You are! You are,” and he quickly placed the pillow over his father’s face.
There was little struggle as the elder Peterson was already weak and dying from the cancer. Still, he tried to scream, but his voice was muffled by the pillow which bore down hard and smothered his entire face like a white cloud. It only took a few seconds, but still he waited a few moments longer. When Jeffrey no longer felt his father moving, he removed the pillow and put it back under his head.
He then closed his father’s wide open brown eyes, a thin smile playing across his face. Jeffrey looked wildly around the room again to make sure no one else was in the room. He had to get out without suspicion; his mind whirled as he paced the hospital room floor. Suddenly, he stopped and looked down at his arms. He remembered how as a child he would often pinch himself to bring about tears in order to get what he wanted. It had worked so well then.
Jeffrey proceeded to pinch himself so hard, he started to cry. Then, he ran out of the room screaming for a nurse or doctor to come. “My father is dead!” he yelled passionately. “Please help me! My father is dead!”
A few seconds later, he returned with the doctor who immediately went to check Elijah’s heart. Nothing. He looked up at the still sobbing young man who stood anxiously on the other side of him. The doctor hated this part of his job. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned forlornly to Jeffrey. “I’m so sorry. He has passed. We told you this might happen with his illness, you understand.”
The doctor watched as a single tear rolled down Jeffrey’s left cheek slowly like a snail. “You were right, doctor. Please take care of him until the funeral home picks him up,” and then he turned and left the room. “I have a party to go to,” he said as he walked down the hall and out of the hospital, a pleasant smile now etched on his face like a mask.
Over on Jackson Street, an unusually calm Sy Sanford was getting ready for the Black and White Ball in his room. He had managed to find a tuxedo in time for the event at a men’s retail store on First Street; it was the last one in the shop, and thankfully, it was a perfect fit. He was now putting on the final touches, smoothing out the white shirt as best as he could with an old iron he had borrowed from the store clerk. Sy had never worn a tuxedo before; he had no reason to in the Army or before that, for that matter. Before joining, he had worked odd jobs here and there for farmers in and around Petersburg and its surrounding counties. There was no need for a tuxedo in the fields picking cotton or tobacco.
Sy put down the iron and carefully put on the shirt. It felt cool on his skin. As he buttoned the shirt, he went over the plan again in his head. Jeffrey Peterson would be there, he was sure of it. The Petersons had always attended the ball since its inception and were considered one of its staple guests. Sy also knew the other businessmen who had hired him would be there as well. They were going to want answers soon; time was running out.
Although he knew that Peterson was a killer, the fact of the matter was that he couldn’t tell anyone until he had hard proof. Mena was right. No one was going to take the word of a whore and a drunk. Yes, he was a drunk. He had a drinking problem – for a long time now – but he had still managed to do alright until now. He used to drink just to pass out; the insomnia had been robbing him of his sleep and sanity since returning from France in 1919. But now he was blacking out and he couldn’t get his mind to recall missing details once he came to consciousness - like the hosiery tha
t still lay buried in the bottom of his trash. His eyes involuntarily fell on the trashcan in the corner then.
“Why can’t I remember?” he found himself saying out loud. He looked down at his hands and they were shaking. He cupped them to stop the shaking. Then suddenly an image of a huge mud puddle flashed before his eyes, and he heard something. What was it? His ears strained to hear. He held his breath. Then it was gone.
Sy looked at himself in the mirror one more time. He had cut his hair himself earlier; he had learned how to do that for himself as well while in the Army. There were no barbershops in the trenches and sometimes even in the cities they’d camp in overnight. Sy and his men sometimes had to go for weeks without a haircut or shave until he had had enough, and took out a razor one day and did the job himself. He smiled at the remembrance of how badly his men had teased him when they saw that the cut was crooked. “Nice cut, Cap’n Sanford. A map back home,” they teased.
He had also shaved this morning; Sy never could grow much hair on his face, but the five o’clock shadow would make him stand out tonight. The men would be clean-shaved unless they had a mustache, but even that would be trimmed. He rubbed his chin to feel its smoothness. Perfect. He looked about five years younger - except for his eyes. Splotches of red crowded around the irises. Large black bags hung underneath his eyes like loose change in a cloth bag. They always gave away his life story, having seen way too much in this world already. Spending nearly every waking hour in a bottle of bourbon or whiskey when the law wasn’t looking was not helping either.
“I can see why she doesn’t want me now,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “I look like shit on a pile of shit,” he mumbled.
Sy exhaled, shrugged his shoulders and forced his mind to go over his plan to expose Peterson again because that was easier to think about. He had not been on reconnaissance since the war and was kind of excited about doing it again, only this time, he would not be covered knee deep in mud and dead bodies. Back in France, it seemed like he and his battalion spent 23 hours a day buried in mud or battle. Reconnaissance missions allowed him the chance to get away from the cramped quarters of the trenches. While on the mission, he would often look up at the night sky and fantasize about making love to his girl at the time – Sylvia.
Sylvia was a big boned, light-skinned girl from the Ward. He fell in love with her when they met at a local baseball game in Richmond. They were together every day for several months before he joined the service. Three months before coming back to the States, he received a letter from her best friend, Anne, telling him that Sylvia had died in childbirth. She had gotten married to a local farmer; she just couldn’t wait for Sy to come home.
He took every dangerous reconnaissance assignment for several months afterwards in the secret hopes of being killed in battle so that he did not have to come back to the Ward and be reminded of his loss. But he was not the first or last man – Negro or white – to feel that way.
“’Nough already,” he admonished himself in the mirror. He grabbed his top hat from off the kitchen table, turned off the lights and walked out the door. He was supposed to meet Mrs. Jones in front of her home and they would ride over to the ball in her limousine. Yes, it was gonna be a long night, but by the end of it, he’d hoped to be able to report to Mrs. Jones and the others the solid proof that Jeffrey Peterson was the Jackson Ward murderer and then collect his money, get Lena and leave town for good.
Chapter 28
Sy had never ridden in a limousine before, so the short trip up the street would have been a real treat for him if he had been thinking about it. But he wasn’t. He was thinking about the brief conversation he had had with Lena. She was not happy.
“Why didn’t you tell me you was goin’ to the ball with Mrs. Jones?” she whispered tightly in his ear as Mrs. Jones descended the stairs slowly.
“Please, Lena,” he had pleaded. “Everythin’ will be alright for us after tonight.” His green eyes implored her to return his gaze, but she kept her eyes straight ahead.
“You don’t trust me,” she replied.
Sy didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to tell her that he was just trying to keep her safe – that if anything ever happened to her again, he’d—
But Mrs. Jones had quickly ushered him out of the door saying something like they had to make a grand entrance. Sy didn’t know what that meant, so he just kept quiet and followed Mrs. Jones to the waiting car. Before he got in the car, he turned back to see if Lena was watching, but the door was closed. “Lena,” he whispered under his breath.
They pulled up to the A.D. Price Funeral Home on the corner of Leigh and Second Street behind a procession of hearse-like limousines, horse buggies and other kinds of cars. The loud noises of the car engines mixed with the smell of horse manure from the carriages choked the air. But no one paid much attention because they were used to it, first of all; but secondly, this was the most important night of the year for the community.
Sy and Mrs. Jones were immediately escorted into the ball and he was immediately left to his own devices as Mrs. Jones was on the planning committee for the ball and had to oversee a few things before the “real” big guests started to arrive.
Her absence gave Sy the chance to observe his surroundings. The grand ballroom looked to Sy like it was as big as a baseball field. Large, expensive looking chandeliers hung precariously from the ceiling as they bathed the room in warm light. The ear-dropped shaped glass droplets were sparkled bright like diamonds. An 18 piece orchestra band led by Duke Ellington played improvised versions of Mozart and Bach with a Jazz twist in the background as Negro women in silk and velvet gowns adorned with embellishments such as beads, rhinestones and fringe, and their equally formally dressed counterparts surveyed themselves cautiously in the wall mirrors that surrounded the ballroom. It was imperative that they look their utmost supreme as their photos would be in the society pages of the local papers the next day. So, they primped and preened themselves and one another as the specially chosen photographers went to and fro gathering poses for the perfect image of the Negro elite.
While some were trapped in these poses, several other couples were already on the dance floor performing one of the most popular Negro dances of the day – the cake walk. It had its origins in slavery having been a form of mockery by the slaves of the grandiose and aristocratic airs of the southern slave masters and their “high society” ways. So what had begun as a joke had now become a most glamorous and competitive form of dance.
But Sy thought they looked like stiff cardboard people as they promenaded around the dance floor with their stiff necks and backs. And although he had seen this dance performed before while in France, he had to admit that no one could do the cake walk better than American Negroes.
He was standing near the right side of the band up front in a corner. He had purposely positioned himself there because it gave him a clear view of the entrance and everyone who walked through it, and so far, no one had walked through worth investigating. They were all too old or classy to be Jeffrey Peterson.
An hour soon passed and he was about to give up when a young, brown skinned man dressed in a fine black tuxedo strolled in confidently. Sy put down his glass of water and watched the young man as he floated around the room smiling and nodding his head in acknowledgement. The young women in the room tried to get his attention with various waves of the hand and one girl even tried to take his arm, but he ignored them and kept making the rounds at the different tables.
“This has to be Peterson,” he said to himself. Suddenly, he felt a large hand grab his arm. Mrs. Jones had returned and was trying to tell him something, but he had stood so long near the orchestra that he couldn’t hear her very well at that moment. “What?” he yelled to her.
“That’s young Peterson!” she yelled back. “His mother died recently. We had a grand parade in her memory, and now his father is dying of stomach cancer. He told me tonight when he came to see me. ”
A terrible
feeling settled in the pit of Sy’s stomach. “He came to your house?”
“Why, yes he did!
“Why?”
Mrs. Jones looked at Sy curiously before explaining. “His family has been long time friends of mine and my late husbands,” she explained coolly. “He came to tell me about Elijah – his father.”
“Was Lena there?” he heard himself ask, his voice sounding as if it were far, far away in the distance.
“Yes, she came in after he arrived. He was very charmin’ and respectful,” said Mrs. Jones innocently.
Sy’s shoulders tensed and his jaw set so rigidly, he felt a headache coming on. “He met Lena,” he stated more to himself than to Mrs. Jones. Sy had to fight a strong urge to leave the ball and go check on Lena, but he knew that was foolish. Lena was perfectly safe; besides, Peterson was here – late – but he was still here. Yet he had to ask.
“Does he always come to the ball an hour late?” he asked with a sense of urgency in his voice that did not go unnoticed by Mrs. Jones.
She hesitated for a moment. “Well, come to think of it, no. He’s always been a pretty punctual person. And he’s always brought a date with him, but I see he’s single tonight.”
Sy rubbed his now sweating hands on his tuxedo pants. “Never late, you say.” He was thinking real hard.
“Maybe he went to see his father again before he came here,” Mrs. Jones explained.
Sy felt like sparks of electricity were shooting through his body. The sound of the music being played by the band receded to the back of his ears as he focused his green eyes intently on Mrs. Jones. “Mrs. Jones, what type of car does he drive?”
Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1) Page 16