Biggie and the Quincy Ghost

by Nancy Bell

  “J.R., you’re getting as windy as Rosebud. Just tell me what you found.”

  “It had some benches around the sides, wide so somebody could sleep on um, and a few old bottles and jars scattered around on the floor. A pile of old rags or clothes was in the corner, but I wasn’t about to touch that mess. It most likely would have had a rat’s nest in it.”

  “So, then what did you do?”

  “Came back to my room. By then, my candle was really getting low, so I just closed the little door and skedaddled back up the stairs. Whatcha think, Biggie?”

  Biggie squinted her eyes and looked at the ceiling. “I think maybe you have just discovered the abolitionist’s secret.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hosiah Tilley,” Biggie said. “Remember at lunch Saturday, Lucas was telling us that an abolitionist used to own this hotel, and he helped runaway slaves escape?”

  “Oh, yeah. And they said he had a secret place here in the hotel where he hid them.”

  “Right,” Biggie said. “He’d hide them in that little room you found, then at night, he’d take them out, give them a horse from the livery stable next door and a twenty-dollar gold piece and send them on their way. But there’s more. J.R., tell me again about the ghost you saw on the night Annabeth was killed.”

  I paused a minute, remembering. “Well, I was in the bathroom, just like tonight, and I heard somebody crying, real faint. I opened the door and felt a cold wind brush past me. Biggie! They must have opened the trapdoor and got away just as I came in there. That’s what that cold wind was. It wasn’t a ghost at all!” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Biggie, I’ll bet that was Annabeth crying that night.” Then I thought of something. “But who was crying in there tonight? Biggie, do you reckon it was Annabeth’s ghost?”

  “No, I don’t,” Biggie said. “I reckon it was a flesh-and-blood person. And I reckon we’re going to find out who it was. What’s that sticking out of your pocket?”

  I pulled the little book out and handed it to Biggie. “I stole it from the museum, but don’t be mad, Biggie. I thought you ought to see it.”

  Biggie flipped through the book.

  “I’ll show you.” I crawled up beside Biggie and turned the pages to the first entry about Augustus Baugh. “They’re all the way through the book, Biggie. Lucas’s granddaddy was paying money to Annabeth’s family. Didn’t you want to see that?”

  “You did the right thing,” Biggie said. “Now, let’s get some sleep. Do you want to spend the night in here with me?”

  “Uh-uh. What are you going to do next, Biggie?”

  “I’m not right sure, but eventually, we’re going to have to go out to Caddo Lake and interview the Baughs. Now, scoot off to bed.”

  The next day was Tuesday. We had already been at this hotel five days, and I don’t mind telling you, I was past ready to go home. I woke early and hurried down to the kitchen to talk to Willie Mae and Rosebud. Willie Mae was pouring batter into muffin cups.

  “What’s that?” I asked sliding into a kitchen chair.

  “Cranberry walnut muffins,” Willie Mae said. “They be ready in fifteen minutes. Get you some milk out of the icebox.”

  “I’d rather have coffee,” I said.

  “You know coffee’ll stunt your growth, and you ain’t no bigger than a flea right now.” Willie Mae slid the muffin pan into the oven.

  “Can I have eggs?”

  Willie Mae sighed and took a frying pan from the pot rack over the stove. “How you want um cooked?”

  “Eyeballs,” I said.

  Willie Mae put a glob of butter in the pan and stirred it around with the spatula until it was melted. Rosebud came into the room and stood beside her as she cracked two eggs into the butter.

  “Best put three more in there,” he said. “I’m hungry as a hog this morning. Boy, them folks were sure glad to get back home. They jabbered my head off all the way.”

  Willie Mae dropped three more eggs into the pan. “You sure took your good time getting back.”

  “I reckon I was glad to be there, too,” Rosebud said. “I brought in the mail and swept the leaves off the front porch before I come on back.”

  Willie Mae looked over her shoulder at me. “If you want any toast, you better put you some bread in the toaster. I ain’t got but two hands.”

  “Rosebud,” I said, dropping two slices of bread into the toaster, “how old were you when you started drinking coffee?”

  “Six,” he said.

  Willie Mae gave him a look.

  “Sixteen, I meant.” He winked at me. “I was sixteen before I ever laid a lip around a coffee mug.”

  I decided to let the matter drop. “Who’s taking care of Booger and Bingo while we’re gone?”

  Willie Mae put two fried eggs on my plate and three on Rosebud’s. “Miz Moody taken the puppy to her house to stay. I left plenty of food and water for that cat out on the back porch.”

  “Old Booger was layin’ up on the porch rail purrin’ his head off when I left,” Rosebud said.

  “I’m about ready to go home,” I said, spearing an egg yolk with a piece of toast.

  Just then, Biggie came bustling into the kitchen. She was dressed to go out. “My soul, I slept too late,” she said. “This morning, I want to go down to the courthouse. I have a feeling we might find some answers to why Judge Fitzgerald was making payments to Augustus Baugh somewhere in the county records.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table.

  “Biggie, I was just saying that I’m about ready to go home.”

  “I am, too,” she said. “And we will just as soon as we find out who murdered poor Annabeth. Come to the courthouse and help me run the records.”

  When we got to the county clerk’s office, who should be standing behind the counter than Emily Faye LaRue.

  “Why, Emily,” Biggie said, “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “I just work mornings,” Emily said, not looking Biggie in the eye. “I took over from Jen Meeks. She’s just had a baby.”

  “Are you going to college this fall?”

  “I don’t guess so.”

  “Why?”

  “Mama doesn’t think it’s necessary. I guess I’d like to.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Biggie said. “Right now, I want to look at all the records from 1900 to around 1920. Birth, marriage, death certificates, deeds, the works.”

  The walls behind the tall counter were lined with file cabinets, and I could see an open door behind her that led to another room filled with tall shelves holding the big books of deeds and stuff.

  Emily pulled a pad toward her and wrote down the dates. She went into a little side office marked COUNTY CLERK and spoke to someone, then came back carrying a key. “Those records are downstairs in the basement,” she said. “I can take you down there—or, if you’d rather, you can look at them on microfilm here in this office.”

  “I want to see the originals,” Biggie said.

  Emily led us down the hall to a flight of marble steps that led into the basement. She turned right and pretty soon we came face-to-face with another thick door like the one I’d seen at the museum. “We keep them in this vault,” she said, inserting her key and turning the big wheel that opened the door. Emily flipped on a light and commenced to show Biggie where the different records were kept. When she was through, Biggie watched while she left the room and then began pulling books off the shelves.

  “You take the deeds,” she said. “Mark everything that has the name of Baugh or Fitzgerald. The judge may have bought a piece of land from Augustus Baugh. On second thought, check the notary’s signature down at the bottom of the documents. Back in the old days, attorneys used to notarize their own work. It’s possible the judge was making those payments for someone else. I’ll run the marriage, birth, and death records.”

  We worked along in silence for a long time. All of the deeds were written by hand, and the language they used was funny. I was barely halfway through
1882 when Biggie slapped the page she was looking at.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said. “This might be our answer. A birth certificate. It says on January 1, 1900, a baby girl, Marcella, was born to Rachel Quincy. Funny, they don’t give a father’s name.”

  “I reckon she wasn’t married.”

  “I guess. But that’s not all. On that same date, a child, stillborn, was born to one Augustus Baugh and his wife, Coralee. J.R., leave the deed records and start looking through probate. Find every will that was filed in the name of Quincy and see if the name Marcella shows up.”

  That took a while. Plenty of Quincys died, but none had an heir named Marcella. I shoved that aside and started looking through marriages. “Biggie, here’s something funny,” I said.

  “Hmm?” Biggie had her head in the death certificates.

  “Biggie, it says here, a lady named Marcella Baugh got married to Ralph Meeks in December of 1914.”

  “Let me see that,” Biggie said. “Well, if it is the same child, she got married at fourteen. But I don’t suppose that was unheard of back then—especially among country folks. Run upstairs and ask Emily if we can get copies of these papers, the two birth certificates and the marriage license.”

  I came back to tell her Emily says we can have the copies, but she’ll have to make them from the microfilm. The books can’t leave this room. She says get the volume and page for her, and she’ll make the copies.

  It was lunchtime by the time we got back to the hotel. Biggie had the copies in her big black purse.

  “Who can tell me how to get to the Baugh place?” Biggie asked when we were all seated at the big table in the dining room.

  Miss Mary Ann set a plate of cornbread on the corner of the table and looked at Biggie. “Biggie, I don’t think … I mean … do you really think you should go out there? Those people …”

  “I really don’t advise it, Miss Biggie.” Lew Masters looked serious.

  “Rosebud is driving us.” Biggie spooned butterbeans with little bits of ham onto her plate.

  “You take Highway 18 out of town going east.” Lucas smeared butter on a piece of cornbread, being careful to get it all over. “When you see a sign pointing to Nowhere, turn right. Keep going until you come to Beck’s Bait Shop. They’ll be able to tell you where to go from there.”

  “Nowhere?” I said.

  “It’s the name of a town, and when you get there, you’ll see why,” Brian said.

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “A few times.” Brian looked down at his plate.

  Rosebud drove the car to the outskirts of town and turned east on Highway 18. We passed pretty little farms and ranches with white houses and red barns and mowed pastures. Occasionally we would see a great big house sitting back on a hill. Biggie said those were most likely owned by Dallas folks who had come to the country to retire.

  “Why Dallas folks?” I asked.

  “Because the locals who could afford houses like that wouldn’t move this far out in the country on a bet,” Biggie said.

  “How come?”

  “Oh, J.R., they just wouldn’t. Don’t ask so many questions.”

  A few miles farther out, the farms got shabbier, with fences falling and unpainted barns with tin roofs. After a while, the pine trees grew thicker and closer to the road, and the farms disappeared altogether. Every now and then we’d pass an acre or two that looked like a tornado had come through leaving just a few scrawny trees behind. Rosebud said those were places where the timber had been cut.

  “It’s ugly,” I said.

  “Those trees were planted for cutting,” Biggie said. “There’s very little virgin timber left in these parts. However, you’ll see some around the lake. That’s protected land.”

  “Rosebud,” I said, just to make conversation so Biggie wouldn’t launch into her conservation lecture, which I’d heard about a million times, “do you like living with us?”

  “Sure.”

  “Better than anyplace you’ve ever lived before?”

  “I’d say just about.” Rosebud looked over his shoulder at me and grinned.

  “Well, what if you won the lottery and could live anyplace in the world. Where would you live then?”

  “Nowhere,” Rosebud said.

  “Huh? Rosebud, you can’t …”

  “Nowhere.” Rosebud pointed ahead. “There’s the sign.” He turned left onto a one-lane gravel road. “I reckon this here must be the bait shop.”

  Rosebud pulled the car into a bumpy drive and parked beside a gas pump in front of a rickety building. A homemade sign on the top said BECK’S BAIT SHOP AND BAR. A wooden box on legs stood under the grimy front window. WORMS was spray painted in black across the front of the box. The screen door opened and slammed behind a man with a big beer belly. He was wearing overalls over a grubby tee shirt and running shoes with no laces or socks. The edges of his lips were stained with tobacco juice. He looked at Biggie’s big car.

  “You folks get lost from the rest of the funeral?” He grinned a big toothless grin.

  Biggie jumped out of the car and trotted up to the man. “Nope,” she said. “Just need a tank full of gas and a little information.”

  The man took the nozzle from the pump and stuck it in the fuel tank. While the gas pumped, Rosebud asked the man how to get to the Baugh place.

  “Ya’ll ain’t the laws, is you?” The man looked first at Biggie, then Rosebud, then me.

  “Do we look like law enforcement officers?” Biggie shot back.

  “No’m. Reckon not.”

  “Biggie, I could use a Big Red,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Biggie said, pulling a bill out of her purse. Go in and get us all a cold drink.”

  “Go on in the back and tell Marge to give you what you want,” the man said.

  The screen door drug the floor, and I had to lift it up to get it open. I stepped into a dingy room with a counter running along the back wall and shelves all around which held cans of Copenhagen and Skoll snuff, cigarettes, motor oil, sardines, Vienna sausages, crackers, and a few jars of peanut butter. An old-timey Coke box, the kind you open from the top, stood in one corner with a sign over it that said, BAIT SHRIMP—$2.00, LIVER—50 CENTS A POUND, MINNOWS OUT BACK. I opened the lid and peeked in. It smelled to high heaven.

  I looked up and noticed a door to the left of the counter, which was open. The sign above it said BAR—BILLIARDS. I heard George Strait singing about Amarillo by morning. I poked my head in the room, which was only lit by a jukebox and a couple of beer signs over the bar. A fat man was feeding coins into a pinball machine.

  “Can I hep yew?” said a voice from the darkness.

  Feeling really grown-up, I walked up to the bar and sat down on a stool. I slapped the five Biggie had given me down and said, “I’ll have a Diet Coke, an R.C., and a Big Red.”

  While a big woman with half-black and half-blond hair was getting the drinks, I had a look around. At a table in the corner by the jukebox, four teenage boys and one girl were drinking beer and talking real loud. When a slow dance started playing, the girl and one of the boys got up to dance. The girl was wearing a bikini top and really short cutoffs. The boy had his hands all over her, which was pretty sickening if you ask me. The girl didn’t seem to mind, though. She had herself plastered against him so tight you couldn’t have gotten a dollar bill between the two of them. They were moving pretty slow, but finally he turned her around. She looked at me and I like to have fell off that bar stool. It was none other than Emily LaRue. I think she recognized me because she hid her face in the boy’s neck and wouldn’t look back at me again.

  Quick as I could, I grabbed my drinks and change and hurried on out of there to tell Biggie what I’d seen. They were already sitting in the car, and before I could get a word out, Rosebud had pulled out of the driveway and we were sailing down the road.

  “Are you positive it was Emily?” Biggie asked.

  “Yes’m.”

  Biggie turne
d and faced me. “And she was dressed how?”

  “I told you, Biggie. She didn’t have hardly anything on. And she was acting real rude.”

  “Rude? How?”

  I don’t like to talk about such things in front of Biggie. “You remember that movie, Dirty Dancing?”

  Biggie nodded.

  “Well, that’s what they were doing, dirty dancing—only they weren’t as good as that couple in the movie.”

  Biggie grinned. “Rosebud, turn this car around. I’ve got to go see this for myself.”

  So, Rosebud turned the car around and Biggie went in and peeked into the bar then came back out shaking her head. “Let’s go,” was all she said.

  14

  The Baugh house sat in a clearing in the pines at the end of a rutty dirt road. It was a big house, unpainted, built up on stilts with a porch around the front and sides. Four skinny old cow dogs ran out from under the porch wagging their tails and sniffing us. I think they were hoping we had some food on us. Rosebud tossed them the peanut butter crackers he’d bought at the store, and the dogs swallowed them down and commenced whining for more.

  “Go on, dogs,” Rosebud said. “Miss Biggie, y’all stay here while I see if anybody’s home.”

  He climbed up the steps to the porch and knocked on the door. A tall man came out followed by an even taller woman who had dyed black hair slicked back in a bun. After her, came two boys who looked to be about Brian’s age wearing overalls with no shirts. Rosebud spoke to them for a minute and then motioned for us to come.

  Biggie walked up to the man, stuck out her little hand and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Baugh. I’m Biggie Weatherford from over in Job’s Crossing. This is my grandson, J.R., and my associate, Rosebud Robichaux.

  The man looked at Biggie like she’d lost every one of her marbles while the two boys scratched themselves. Finally, the woman spoke up. “Well’m this here’s my husband, Mule.” She pointed to the two boys. “Them’s the twins, Travis and Crockett. My name’s Faye. Now, what ’chall want with us?”