Murder on the Mullet Express
Page 20
“Can I ask you a question?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You just did,” Cornelia replied.
“True enough. But what I wanted to ask is: after fighting like the devil to clear your uncle, you turned around and tried to help Mrs. Carson. Why? I’d be livid if someone framed my uncle.”
Cornelia’s brow furrowed. “Mrs. Carson was livid. Look where that led.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t get angry,” he said. “You were mad as a bee in a bottle over those men today.”
“I have a frightful temper.”
“Not with Mrs. Carson. Once you got her to confess, you set about trying to get her out of the mess she’s in.”
“You think she should rot in jail.”
Mitch frowned. “She committed cold-blooded murder.”
The waitress arrived with Mitch’s pie and the check.
Cornelia waited until she was out of earshot. “I would think it was rather hot blooded,” she said. “The rage she held over Janzen’s role in her sister’s death was a banked fire. When she discovered Janzen was going to be at that land sale, the flame consumed her. She blocked out everything else. Her husband, her children, her life vanished from her thoughts. Her world narrowed to Janzen and her sister.”
“You feel sorry for her.”
“No. I understand her desire to give Janzen a dose of the drug he gave her sister. She saw it as poetic justice. If she had taken a moment to think what that kind of justice would do to the other people she loved… I feel sorry for her children. They love her. They need her. Those children are the real casualties of her private war.”
Mitch was puzzled. “You care that much about children you’ve never met?”
“Yes. I care that they will lose the rest of their childhood. Those children will be teased and tormented by their peers, and made to pay a thousand times over for their mother’s crime. Rosemary needs clemency for their sake.”
“Who would have thought that Miss Cornelia Pettijohn had a soft spot for children?”
“Even I was a child once; not one who got on well with other children, though,” Cornelia replied.
Mitch didn’t know what to say. In school, he was as guilty as anyone else in teasing odd or plain classmates. It had seemed harmless then. The look in Miss Cornelia’s eyes told him that old hurts still lingered.
He scraped the last of his pie from the plate and lifted it to his mouth. “That was outstanding. Are you sure you won’t have a slice before we go?”
“You enjoyed it enough for the both of us.”
Cornelia was impressed. The mechanic had cleaned as well as repaired her sedan. Every inch of metal gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. The leather was buffed to a fine sheen. Even the tires looked clean. Her automobile hadn’t looked this good since she drove it from the Dodge Brothers showroom.
“Is that your uncle’s vehicle?” Mitch asked.
Cornelia bristled. “No. It’s mine.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. The way Professor Pettijohn talks—I thought it was his.”
“I’ve noticed,” Cornelia said.
Mitch chuckled. “I’m going to miss the old guy. He’s quite a character.”
“Isn’t your paper in St. Petersburg? Perhaps you could join us for dinner one evening. We’ll be staying at the Vinoy Park Hotel for the next week.”
Mitch whistled. “That’s a little out of my class, Miss Pettijohn. A meal there would cost me a week’s pay.”
“Really?”
“The hotel’s only been opened since New Year’s Eve, but the guest list supplies half our society columns.”
Cornelia wondered if her uncle knew. Perhaps he had booked the fancy hotel for his birthday. Too bad matters in Homosassa had quashed that. He’d worked hard enough earning his money. It was good that he was getting to enjoy some of the rewards of his labor.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find us,” Cornelia said as she climbed out of the Cadillac.
She started to close the door, paused and leaned in, “Thank you, for everything. I don’t know what would have happened without your help.”
Mitch pressed his lips together and nodded.
She closed the door and walked into the garage.
Cornelia slipped behind the wheel of her sedan, stepped on the clutch, and turned the key. The engine rumbled to life. She shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. She turned the corner onto the Dixie Highway and let the car pick up speed. She shifted again and stepped on the gas. For the next couple of hours, she was going to sit back and enjoy the peace and quiet of being absolutely alone.
THE END
The Mary Pickford Cocktail
One unexpected consequence of Prohibition was the large number of American bartenders who found work in Cuba. Eddie Woelke and Fred Kaufmann were both among the bartending refugees tending bar at the Hotel National de Cuba. Woelke, the senior bartender, claimed credit for inventing the Mary Pickford cocktail, but Kaufmann was better known for using fresh pineapple juice in his drinks. In 1928 Basil Woon, not known for his accuracy, gave the credit to Kaufman in his book When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba. We may never know for certain which of them invented the Mary Pickford in honor of the film star’s 1922 visit to Cuba, where she spent the winter with her husband, actor Douglas Fairbanks.
Another point of contention over the cocktail arose from not writing the recipe down. The first know written recipe for the drink appeared nearly seven years later and did not contain the signature Italian Maraschino liqueur. The version served at the Hotel National de Cuba is made with white rum and Maraschino liqueur, as does the version in the International Bartender’s Association official guide. Drinkers will have to decide for themselves which way the cocktail should be made.
Mary Pickford Cocktail
(*1 shot = 1 ounce = 60 ml)
2 shots white rum
1 1/2 shots fresh pineapple juice
1/4 shot grenadine
1/8 shot Maraschino liqueur
Pour over chipped ice, shake, and strain into a large chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a wedge of fresh pineapple, a maraschino cherry, or both. Serve straight up.
Information on the Mary Pickford Cocktail recipe comes from the HavanaClub.com and the Hotel National de Cuba website.
Authors’ Notes
Homosassa
Native Americans were the first inhabitants of the area that became Homosassa. The Armed Occupation Act of 1842, which granted 160 acres of land to any head of a family or single man who could bear arms, led to the settlement of Homosassa by homesteaders. William Cooley was the first prominent citizen of the new town. He sold his property to David Levy Yulee in 1851. Yulee had his slaves clear a thousand acres for a plantation and sugar mill along the Homosassa River. Yulee was the first Jew to serve in Congress, but his career and the plantation both ended with the Civil War.
Homosassa inspired dreams long before the West Coast Development Company. Northern investors purchased Yulee’s land in 1884 and, as the newly-formed Homosassa Company, platted their new property for a city set up in the neoclassical tradition. It was never fully developed, but the town attracted many important tourists: Grover Cleveland, John Jacob Astor, and other notables.
The West Coast Development Company
The West Coast Development Company was formed in 1924 by H.S. and Bruce L. Hoover, along with over 700 associates. The Company quietly purchased a reported 142 miles of Gulf frontage and its associates held $200,000,000 in combined wealth at the time New Homosassa was introduced.
Homosassa Springs
New Homosassa, better known as Homosassa Springs, was built slightly west of the original fishing village of Homosassa. The city designer was Harland Bartholomew, best known for being the first city planner for St. Louis, Missouri. Promotions painted the picture of a shining utopia rising from an emerald jungle. “Homosassa, Miracle City,” one advertisement read, with a list of “Moral and Financial Endorsements.” “Plans a
re laid for an ultimate city of 100,000 people,” a brochure from the Chamber of Commerce announced. The fertility of the hammock land, the “almost exhaustless source of lumber and lumber products”, and the spectacular abundance of fish, waterfowl, and wild game were among the selling points. The advantages of the location were as advertised, but Homosassa Springs never reached the projected population size of the brochure.
The Mullet Express
In December 1888, the Silver Springs, Ocala and Gulf Railroad opened a spur line from Ocala to Homosassa. They named the line the “Dunnellon Short,” but to locals it is forever the Mullet Express. For more than forty years the “Mullet Express” pulled out of Homosassa Station at 6:30 AM each weekday loaded with mullet, logs, Spanish moss, mail, passengers and bootlegged whiskey headed to northern markets.
Homosassa station’s small sidetrack was abuzz with workers long before dawn. In the days before ice was readily available, the fish was dried and packed in barrels that had to be hand loaded into railcars. Later, the barrels were replaced by large bins that were filled nightly with fresh fish packed in layers of ice and loaded onto the train before it left town. Both methods involved backbreaking work that had to be finished on schedule.
Each evening Engine 501 returned carrying the mail, merchandise for local businesses, and tourists keen of visiting the famed “sportsman’s paradise” in and around Florida’s Homosassa River. Occasionally, a private Pullman owned by some of the wealthier sportsmen was added to the rear of the train in Ocala to be sidetracked in Homosassa for the duration of their visit. Sportsmen’s guides as far back as 1890 mention trips to Homosassa aboard these private luxury cars.
The steam locomotive, its two passenger cars, flatcar, and mail car made a final last run in November of 1941. Old Engine 501 was scrapped along with the railcars and tracks to provide much needed metal for WWII war effort. Today Homosassa Springs State Park is host to a modernized version of the locomotive, the new ‘Mullet Express” was designed from photographs and harkens back to the old train’s history, delivering a recorded message about the Express to park visitors.
The Atlanta Fishing Club and the Chauffeur’s Cabin
A group of some two dozen prominent businessmen and sportsmen from Atlanta, Georgia formed The Atlanta Fishing Club in 1899. One of the club activities was an annual fishing trip to the banks of the Homosassa River. The group purchased land, and in 1903 built a clubhouse for the use of current and future members. The two-story wood frame house features Victorian Revival decorative gable ends. It has been altered and added to several times, but it remains a private club owned and visited by the same Georgia families that founded the club.
One of the early and most difficult additions to make was a chauffeur’s cabin near the main house. Homosassa had a clearly posted sign on the highway at the outskirts of town informing the public that, for their own safety, colored people were not permitted within the city limits after sundown. An exception was made for the chauffeurs on the condition that they not leave the cabin after dark. Until the Jim Crow laws were overturned, this tiny cabin was the only place in Homosassa where a black man could spend the night.
Unlike the clubhouse, the chauffeur’s cabin no longer stands on the original site. When club members wished to have the cabin removed, it was adopted by local history buff Jim Anderson and moved to the backyard of his Olde Mill House printing museum. He uses the front porch of the cabin as the stage for an annual music festival and has even written a blues number about one of the chauffeurs who autographed the walls of the old cabin.
Binder Boys
Binder boys (‘binder’ sometimes pronounced to rhyme with ‘tinder’) were generally young men who started transactions for a piece of land and took the binder, also known as the down payment, from the buyer of a piece of property. Some binder boys were used by land agents who needed assistance in handling the glut of transactions during the Florida Land Boom, but others were entrepreneurs who placed the first binder on a property themselves, then resold it at a higher value to the next customer.
Kit Houses
Kit houses were also known as mail order homes, pre-cut homes, or catalog homes. As ‘mail order’ suggests, these were houses that could be ordered for delivery. The kit contained all the lumber and materials necessary to construct the house, with the frequent exception of mortar, bricks, or other items needed to build the foundation. The buyer usually hired local workers to handle this last part.
During the early twentieth century, Sears and Roebuck sold a large number of kit houses, as did Sterling Homes and Harris Homes. The materials were shipped by rail to the desired location and assembled by workers. Anything from a simple cottage or a two-story house with porches could be ordered from catalogs.
Most homes were of the standard ‘box’ variety, but in late 1925 The Aladdin Company bought some property in south Florida, where they intended to construct Aladdin City, a town with Moorish-style buildings. In January of 1926, they had a ‘dawn to dusk’ demonstration where they built an entire house on opening day. Construction petered out quickly with the end of the Florida Land Boom, but some of the structures lasted until the 1980s, when Hurricane Andrew dealt serious damage to the area.
Medicinal Alcohol
Prohibition didn’t ban the use of alcoholic beverages in all circumstances. A medical loophole was also created in the Volstead Act for the therapeutic prescribing of alcohol. As a result, medicinal alcohol, also known as Spiritus frumenti, was prescribed throughout Prohibition.
Under the provisions of this loophole, only a physician with a permit could write a prescription for medicinal alcohol. The dose of this medical dispensation was limited to one pint every ten days. The government issued books of specially designed forms for this purpose, and the designs were changed often to outstrip counterfeiters.
Economist Clark Warburton stated that the consumption of medicinal alcohol increased by 400 percent during the 1920s. By 1929, there were 116,756 physicians in the twenty-six states that permitted the use of medicinal alcohol. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, about half of those physicians were prescribing it for patients.
Real People
Ignacio Antinori (February 17, 1885 – October 23, 1940), Tampa’s earliest Italian mafia boss, was born in Palermo, Sicily. He emigrated to the United States with his family in the early 1900s. By the 1930s, Antinori had established a narcotics pipeline, one of the largest in the country, from the Cuban gangs in Tampa to the Kansas City Mafia. His family was later subsumed by the Trafficante family.
During the mid-1920s, Antinori challenged Charlie Wall for control of organized crime in the Tampa Bay region, kicking off the “Era of Blood”. The rivalry lasted for about a decade. In early 1940, Antinori brought Kansas City hitmen in to kill Charlie Wall. It was the third attempt on Wall’s life, though, and he was cagey enough to survive. Antinori’s murder later that year, however, was not Wall’s revenge. The story that surfaced was that Antinori sent a shipment of bad narcotics to the Chicago Mafia. They were displeased, to say the least, and demanded a refund. Antinori refused, and his funeral was closed-casket.
Basil Orville Bowden (November 15, 1868 – April 30, 1938) was the sheriff of Citrus County during the time this book is set. Bowden lost his father when he was only three months old and his mother at the tender age of six. He rose above the adversity of his early life through honesty and hard work, first as a farmer, then a newspaper publisher. In 1904 he established the Dade City Star and ran the paper until he sold it in 1915. He moved to Inverness and became owner and editor of the Citrus County Chronicle.
His reputation as a man of exceptional integrity and a solid business background led to his being appointed county sheriff in 1917 in the hopes he could salvage the office from financial ruin. In a year’s time he reversed the deficit, reduced the debt, and put the affairs of the office in order. Throughout his career he ran the sheriff’s office efficiently and economically. He was considered
by his peers to be the best sheriff in the state of Florida.
In addition to his duties as sheriff, he also served as chair of the county draft board. Bowden took pride in the fact that his own sons volunteered for service in WWI instead of waiting to be called. He viewed service a responsibility of citizenship.
The character of “Sheriff Bowden” in this book is entirely a work of fiction. While we have endeavored to keep the character true to the reputation of the actual person, the events and conversations, the personality and mannerisms are all made up for the sake of telling a good story. There is no relationship between the fictional sheriff and the true Sheriff Bowden beyond using his name.
Charles Arthur “Dazzy” Vance (March 4, 1891 – February 16, 1961) was a professional baseball player who pitched for five Major League franchises, including the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was best known for his fastball and the “three men on third” incident in 1926 where he and two other players tried to occupy third base at the same time. Vance first visited Florida for spring training, but found many other reasons to return. He had a great love for fishing and hunting, and Citrus County became his permanent home. Vance purchased the Homosassa Hotel from the West Coast Development Company in 1930 and entertained many of his friends there. Vance was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.