“I’d like to go there now and talk to him. I haven’t had the chance. Can you call and tell him I’m coming?”
“Of course. You can take your time. I’ll be here a while”
He looked around the room.
“This sucks.”
I left my car in the club lot and walked toward the Olsen house. On the way a KrullCorp security car pulled up alongside me. It was Ricks.
“Hey, Mr. Rhode. Need a lift?’
I thought about what I wanted to do at Olsen’s house. The security cop could come in handy. I certainly didn’t want to ask the butler for help.
“Sure.”
On the drive over I asked him if he wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes in the Olsen’s hallway while I spoke to the butler.
“Not a problem.”
We got out at the house and I rang.
“Very nice to see you again, Mr. Rhode,” Robert said after answering the door.
Butlers have to lie a lot.
“Do you mind if this officer waits for me inside? I have some questions for him.”
“Of course not, sir.”
Robert had his jacket off and was wearing a black apron. He asked me if I could conduct my interview in the kitchen so he could keep working. When we got there I leaned against a counter while he made sandwiches and filled a cooler with ice and beer.
I really didn’t have anything to ask him. He wasn’t the reason I was in the house. He’d been with the family for years and no one, myself included, seriously considered he was involved in any aspect of the case. Someday I hoped to solve a crime where the butler did it, but this wasn’t the one. But I went through the motions. He told me that he was shocked by Elizabeth’s death. She had not appeared despondent. On the contrary, she seemed girded for battle.
“Miss Olsen had a great deal of faith in you,” he said.
It was a faith, I could tell, that Robert didn’t share. Elizabeth died on one of his regular days off, and he felt guilty. There was nothing I could say to that. After I exhausted enough meaningless questions, I thanked him and told him to go about his business. I’d let myself out.
When I got to the front hallway, I pulled a tape measure out of my pocket and went to the spot where I had looked up at Elizabeth Olsen’s body. Again, I tried to reconstruct the scene in my mind, a task made easier by actually being there. Elizabeth’s dangling feet had been at my eye level. I asked Ricks to confirm my recollections. He did. We were about the same height, so I asked him to stand in the spot where we both remembered Elizabeth’s feet had been. Then I went up the stairs to the landing.
The rope around Elizabeth’s neck had been tied at the top of the banister between two supports. I measured the height of the banister. It was exactly three feet. I knew that she was not much taller than five-feet and weighed perhaps 100 pounds, maybe 110. I let the tape measure drop down to Ricks and told him to stop it at his eye level. I could do the exact math later, but factoring in Elizabeth’s height, it was obvious the plunge that supposedly broke her neck was only about three feet. I even considered the possibility that she’d sat on the top of the banister and slid off. That put the potential drop at six feet, at most. The other possibility was that she stood at the top of the banister and jumped. She would have had to be a Wallenda to do that on a rounded banister. I now had a working theory.
Elizabeth Olsen died of a broken neck. But she didn’t break it.
I really wished I had the rope and her body.
Outside I told Ricks that I didn’t want anyone knowing what we had just done.
“Not a problem.”
CHAPTER 21 – POSSUM HOUSE
“Your son told me that you were at a writers’ conference.”
Mimi Faulkner smiled, looking slightly embarrassed. I had flown to Savannah in the morning, rented a car and driven 40 miles due west on I-16 to Statesboro to look for information on Laura Lee Litton. I was surprised by the alacrity with which Mrs. Faulkner agreed to meet me for lunch, especially after initially telling me on the phone she didn’t think she could help me.
“Yes,” she said, as she took a ladylike forkful of her house salad. I’d already finished mine. “The Sewanee Writers’ Retreat at the University of the South in Tennessee. I’ve gone the last three years.”
She was a well-proportioned woman with jet black hair. I estimated she was in her mid-50’s, but like many Southern women, looked younger, no matter what the hair color. We had a corner table in the Possum House Inn, which looked like it had been around since the surrender at Appomattox. But if the delicious smells coming from the kitchen were any indication, the Possum House was going to be an improvement on the Taco Bells, Longhorn Steaks, Chili’s, Applebee’s, Pizza Huts, Shoney’s and Ruby Tuesdays that I passed driving into town. Statesboro, as I learned, was home to Georgia Southern University and the undiscriminating palates of 20,000 students during the school year.
“What do you write, Mrs. Faulkner?”
“Please call me Mimi. Some poetry and short stories. Now I am working on a novel.”
“Well, you have the right name for a novelist. What’s it about?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t like talking about my work. I know that sounds pretentious, but I don’t even discuss it with my husband or my children.”
“You don’t have to be defensive. The woman I’m seeing has written a novel and she won’t let me see it. I thought it might be easier to pry information out as our relationship progressed, but I think she’s even more reluctant now.”
Mimi Faulkner took a sip of the white wine she’d ordered. I had opted for a beer after our college-age waitress told me that the house wines, the only ones available, came in “red, white and pink, I think.”
“I imagine you’re pretty good at prying things out of people,” Mimi said, “but the fact is the closer we are to someone, the less we want them to see into our souls.” She laughed. “There I go again, sounding like an artiste. Truth is, if we get published and start making money, we don’t care who reads our stuff.”
“Well, let’s see how good I am at prying something out of you.”
She reached in her bag and took out a reporter’s notebook.
“Two can play that game. I have a small confession. One of the reasons I agreed to lunch was that I’ve never met a private detective and this is a chance for me to do some research. That’s one of the things they teach at the conference.”
“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”
“A private eye who quotes Eugene Ionesco. I’m impressed.”
“I told you, I’m dating a college professor who is also writer. She has that line taped to her computer screen.”
“So, you won’t mind if I pick your brains.”
“You’ll need a bigger notebook.” I said, dropping my voice.
She laughed.
“Jaws, right?”
Our meals came. Scrod for her, Brunswick stew, the “Specialty of the House,” for me. I typically go native when I’m eating in out-of-the-way towns, unless I see everyone walking around with rickets. The stew was basically a dark and very thick meat-based soup the consistency of oatmeal. There was already a basket of warm biscuits and corn bread on the table, now half full because I’d been working on them. But the waiter also brought me a plate of white bread with the stew. I must have looked confused because Mimi Faulkner said, “You’re supposed to put the stew on the white bread.”
“Tell me this isn’t possum meat,” I said, lifting a small chunk with my spoon.
“In the old days it might have been, or squirrel,” she laughed. “But, don’t worry, that won’t be anything but chicken, pork or beef, or a mixture of all of them. With okra, tomatoes, onions, potatoes and you name it.”
I smeared some of the mixture on the white bread. Not bad. I tried it on the corn bread and biscuits. Much better. I let Mimi pump me for private-eye tidbits, which she dutifully jotted down in her noteboo
k. I played the charming, roguish Big Apple gumshoe and was particularly forthcoming, figuring that she would then be more inclined to spill the beans about Laura Lee Litton. We were occasionally interrupted as women, usually in pairs, stopped by to say hello to Mimi and check me out. I didn’t mind. I like Southern gals, of any age. I like the way they sound, the way they hold themselves and the way they look at you. They exude a sexy femininity that should be bottled. Mimi introduced me but didn’t go much beyond that.
When one pair walked away, she said, “My girlfriends will go crazy trying to figure out who you are. They’ll wonder if I’m cheating on Mike. That’s my husband.”
“Who would be crazy enough to cheat in a place called the Possum House?”
“I know. That’s delicious.”
“Why didn’t you tell them who I am?”
“A private detective?” She laughed. “Then they’d think it was Mike who was doing the cheating and I’m checking up on him.”
“A lot of that going on?”
“Are you serious? This is the South. We invented adultery. And a lot of other stuff. Why do you think some of our best writers come from here? There are more skeletons in Southern family closets than in the cemeteries.”
We ordered sweet potato pie for dessert, never a bad idea. Finally, over our second coffees, I got to ask some of my own questions.
“How well did you know Laura Lee Litton? Turn up any skeletons?”
“Is she really involved in a murder? Why aren’t the regular police involved?”
Mimi Faulkner was naturally sharp, with the added curiosity of a budding novelist. I wasn’t going to get anywhere by beating around the bush, so to speak, in the Possum House.
“Her prints turned up at a crime scene. The police aren’t interested because they think they already caught the killer, a woman who is conveniently dead. An apparent suicide. They are probably right, but the dead woman’s father hired me to clear her name, and the only clue, if I can call it that, are Laura Lee’s prints. The fact that she has a record for prostitution, albeit ancient history, is not that interesting. The murdered man had a reputation for screwing any woman not in an iron lung. I’d bet she wasn’t the only hooker he used. But Laura Lee has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. That bothers me.”
Mimi Faulkner jotted down a few more notes and didn’t bat an eye. Perhaps life in a Southern town was as interesting as she suggested. She finally looked at me.
“I wasn’t sure how comfortable I’d feel talking about Laura Lee. I was her guidance counselor and there is the expectation, if not the legal obligation, of confidence in that relationship. But since you know about her prostitution, which is the worst I could have told you about her, I guess it doesn’t matter what else I tell you. And there isn’t much.”
***
The Litton family, Laura Lee and her parents, had rented a small two-bedroom cottage in what would have been a poor neighborhood, if it had been a neighborhood.
“It was basically just a collection of cabins on the outskirts of town,” Mimi Faulkner recalled. “Virgil Litton worked as an itinerant laborer, doing odd jobs for other folks. Laura Lee’s mother mostly stayed home, took in some laundry. They moved here from Alabama and put Laura Lee in Statesboro High when she was a junior. It was tough on her, being uprooted like that, having to make new friends. That’s when I got to know her. She was lost. She had no real refuge at home. Her mother loved her and tried to protect her, but I’m pretty sure her father was abusive to both of them, although she never came right out and said it. He had a very bad reputation in town. He drank.”
Then Virgil disappeared. There was talk of some property missing from some of the houses he worked on as a handyman in the Irongate section of town, one of the newer neighborhoods springing up as Georgia Southern University expanded.
“I got the impression that the move from Alabama was also precipitated by a flight from the law. But this time Laura Lee and her mother didn’t run with him. And I don’t think they ever heard from the bastard again.”
The two women survived alone. Laura Lee got a part-time job in a restaurant and her mother took in more laundry and babysat.
“Mrs. Litton doted on her daughter. Whatever spare money they had went to Laura Lee’s clothes and to dance class. Apparently that had been her mother’s dream and she passed it on to Laura Lee. And she was a wonderful dancer. She was always clean and well-dressed and was soon recognized as one of the prettiest girls in high school. Auburn hair down to her shoulders. She was very proud of her hair.”
“Was she popular?”
“With the boys,” Mimi Faulkner said. “A lot of the girls looked down on her. At that age they can be cliquish. She was from Alabama, remember. Despite her beauty and dancing talents, she wasn’t selected for the cheerleading squad. She closed down even more after that. The boys, however, saw her physical attributes only too well. And given her sense of not belonging, her loneliness as an outsider, she used sex to win acceptance.”
“A lot of girls her age do that.”
“But most don’t look like Laura Lee did.”
“How promiscuous was she?”
“She was what we delicate Southerners call the ‘town pump’.”
“When did she start hooking?”
“Senior year. She had plans to go to Georgia Southern. I helped her get in. Despite everything, she was a good student. The university is an athletic powerhouse and has a nationally famous dance team called the Southern Explosion. Like everyone in town she’d been to the school’s football and basketball games and seen them perform. She had her heart set on going out for the team. And she might have made it.”
“How could she afford college?”
“Georgia Southern is a state school. In-state tuition for her would have been about $5,000 a year. And a partial scholarship took care of half of that. It would have been tight, but with both her and her mother working, it was doable. But then her momma got sick. Cancer. No medical insurance, of course. College was out and they needed money. There was only one way that Laura Lee knew how to get a lot of it.”
“How did you find all this out?”
“Her sex life aside, Laura Lee was one of my success stories. When she quit school, I went to see her. She told me she was selling her body. Not locally, because it would have killed her mother if she found out. So she went down to Fort Stewart and worked the bars near the base. I told her that we would figure out another way. But she was arrested before I could do anything. And she was right. It did kill her mother. After the funeral, Laura Lee disappeared. That was, I’d say, 14 or 15 years ago.”
That would make Laura Lee Litton around 33 or 34 now.
“Do you think I might have another glass of wine?”
“After that story,” I said, “I think I’ll join you.”
“I told you Southerners have a lot to write about.”
I called our waitress over. I opted for the “red.”
“And you never heard from Laura Lee again?”
Mimi smiled and reached for her bag.
“I debated showing this to you. But I can’t see the harm.”
CHAPTER 22 – THE LETTER
She passed across an envelope. Both it and the note inside had the distinctive Cartier imprint. There was also a tattered black-and-white photo of a thin, seemingly malnourished, young girl wearing a dirty, torn dress. The child, about 10, was barefoot. She had close-cropped dark hair and eyes set wide apart. There was a bitter but defiant look on her face. But it was a face that, despite its underlying conflicts, had the potential for beauty. I read the note; its penmanship was exquisite.
“Dear Mrs. Faulkner,
I never forgot the kindness you showed me, particularly after my mother’s death.
I know I was a disappointment to you, after all the trouble you went through to get me into college. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Your support and understanding after my ‘indiscretions’ – that’s what you
so delicately called them – made me realize that I should do something with my life. I just couldn’t do it in Statesboro, or anywhere in the South. Too many bad memories.
But you’re not one of them! I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing well. I earned my high school diploma and have even taken some college courses. I’ve got a job waitressing at a good restaurant. The tips are incredible and I have plenty of time to pursue you know what – dancing! I have enough classes now so that next year I can apply to the Gotham Theatre of Dance. You must have heard about it. It’s simply the best dance school in the country and my friends all tell me I’m sure to get in. Yes, I have friends! I’m splitting the rent with three other girls, also Broadway stars in waiting! And, like me, waitresses. Sometimes I think that if it wasn’t for us girls (and guys) trying to break into show business, there wouldn’t be anybody waiting tables in New York!
I hope you and yours are all well. I will never, ever forget you. And don’t worry about me!
Love,
Laura Lee
PS: This may be the last time I sign my name Laura Lee. I’ve changed my name. Don’t be angry, but I’m not telling anyone what it is. My old life is ‘gone with the wind.’ As a Southerner, I know you understand.”
There was no return address on the envelope, just a Brooklyn postmark dated six years earlier. I held up the photo.
“Laura Lee?”
“Yes. She didn’t look anything like that in high school, but those are her eyes. When she disappeared I went back to her house. It was empty, stripped clean, really. The landlord left a box with trash to be thrown out. On top were some novels. Nothing special but I can’t abide the destruction of literature. So I took them. That photo was stuck between the pages of one of the books. I’d bet the novel belonged to Laura Lee’s mom. The picture was so striking I just had to keep it. It’s like something out of Dickens. I don’t know what Laura Lee is now, but she came from the abyss. That letter is the last I heard from her. Just reading it now breaks my heart. From what you told me, I guess it didn’t work out for her. She went back to prostitution.”
LAURA LEE (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 2) Page 12