“Hello, Harry. How you feeling?”
He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and across his dry lips. “Plumb tuckered out,” he whispered.
“Don’t try to talk. I just dropped in to sit a while.” I looked at the IV tube hanging from the pole beside the bed. “I should have brought some white lightning for this bag. That would get you up and out of here.”
His smile grew a little broader. Then his eyes looked beyond me. “It’s okay. I’m ready.”
What do you say to a man who’s a hundred and five and dying? I pulled a chair from the corner and sat beside him. “I know you’re ready.” I wrapped my hand around his thin wrist just above where the IV was securely taped in place. “I’m feeling sorry for me. Who am I going to split a pair of shoes with?”
He turned his head and stared at me. There was no mirth in his eyes and I was afraid I’d offended him.
“You gave me a great gift, Sam.”
“What’s that?”
“My dad.” He stifled a sob as his eyes teared.
The lump formed quickly in my throat and I could only nod. In the course of finding the killer of Nakayla’s sister, we discovered the fate of Harry’s father and ended a mystery that had haunted the old man since 1919.
“There’s nothing anyone has done that means more.”
I said nothing. Just sat holding onto someone who had been over seventy when I was born, but whose presence would always be with me.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“You’re welcome. Tell your dad I look forward to meeting him.”
Harry placed his other hand on mine. We stayed like that for a few moments till his breath returned to the shallow rhythm and I knew he was asleep. I slipped free, quietly moved the chair against the wall and left him to travel to a place of no tears, no pain, and no return.
I told the nurse that Harry was sleeping comfortably and asked if she knew where I could find Marsha Montgomery. She directed me to a room at the other end of the hall.
Lucille rested in a reclining chair, still wearing her blue dress. Marsha sat on the edge of the bed next to her. I rapped lightly on the door frame. Both women looked up. Lucille smiled. Marsha frowned.
“Just wanted to make sure you were okay, Miss Montgomery.”
Lucille waved me in. “They say it was probably my blood pressure medicine. I took my pills late today and then had a big lunch.”
I didn’t contradict her as to the timing of her swoon. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Maybe we can continue our conversation some other time.”
A look passed between mother and daughter.
Marsha rose from the bed. “Mr. Blackman, I can talk a few minutes now. I suggest we go back to the waiting room. The nurse wants Mother to rest about thirty minutes before checking her blood pressure again.”
“All right.” I nodded to her mother. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Montgomery.”
Marsha and I walked in silence. The waiting room was empty. I closed the door.
“Can we start over?” she asked.
“Sure.” I sat in the nearest chair.
Instead of sitting opposite me, Marsha chose the chair beside me. “I’m sorry if I misrepresented my intentions. You were right. I read the story and I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I was afraid my mother had killed my father. I wanted to create some other explanation.”
“And take the rifle out of the picture.”
She nodded.
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t been in the house for years.”
I didn’t believe her, but I let the statement go unchallenged. I wasn’t prosecuting a case and it was none of my business.
“Why would you think your mother was capable of killing your father?” I asked.
“Anger. I thought he refused to marry her.”
“But interracial marriage wasn’t legal.”
“The summer of 1967 was the year of the big change. Loving versus Virginia.”
“Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“On June 12th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting interracial couples from marrying was unconstitutional. The case they reviewed involved an interracial couple named Loving. Ironic, isn’t it? With that decision, the laws imposed by the states of the old Confederacy were swept away along with any legal barrier to my parents living as husband and wife.”
“And any excuse for your father not to marry your mother.”
“Yes. About a month later, my father disappeared. Mother told me changing the law didn’t change people’s attitudes.”
“She’s right about that. Even forty-five years later.”
Although Asheville is a liberal town, Nakayla and I sensed the undercurrent of disapproval from some who viewed our relationship as an abomination. How do you argue with people who claim to speak for God? People who feel compelled to force their personal moral code upon others because they’re threatened by anything different. We weren’t so far removed from 1967. In fact, North Carolina had just gone through a contentious vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, same-sex unions, and even the legal rights of same-sex couples. The amendment passed with overwhelming support. And the irony was the proponents of this draconian exclusion came as much from the black community as the white.
“Was your mother that angry?”
“No. But I was. Angry and hurt that my father abandoned us. I projected those feelings onto my mother.”
“And now you believe her?”
“Yes. I did what I should have done as soon as I read about the skeleton. I asked her. She swears she knows nothing about it and was shocked when you told her.”
“And the potential marriage?”
Marsha looked away. “She changed her story. Now she says she was the one who refused to get married. Just because they could didn’t mean there wouldn’t be reprisals. She was afraid.”
“Why did she say otherwise?”
“Because she didn’t want me to blame her. Portraying my father as the one who left was easier, and she spun it with the noble motive that he did it for our benefit. The lie created the villains as faceless bigots and my mother and father as victims. It wasn’t so far from the truth.”
“Will she go to the police?”
“I didn’t press the point. She’s upset as it is.”
“Others must know about your father’s disappearance.”
“Then they can step forward. Or we’ll step forward when we have something to say.”
The way she said “we” caught my attention. “What would that be?”
“When you and your partner find the proof of who killed my father. I can’t help but believe your discovery of those remains was no accident. You were meant to find them. God and my father have chosen you.”
Chapter Seven
“So, how do we set up a billing account for God?” Nakayla held her fingers suspended over her computer keyboard waiting for me to give her the divine zip code.
I laughed. “More importantly, how do we check his credit?” I’d given her the summary of my encounter with Captain and Lucille Montgomery at Golden Oaks and Marsha’s belief that we were destined to find her father’s killer.
“Who is her father?” Nakayla asked. “She never said in the office.”
I took a small pad out of my pocket and glanced at the notes I’d scribbled in the waiting room. “Jimmy Lang.” As I said the name, I remembered hearing it earlier. “Captain told me Marsha works for Lang Paper Manufacturing. I wonder if there’s a connection?”
“Should be easy enough to find out. I’ll run checks on Jimmy Lang, Jim Lang, and James Lang.” She jotted down the names. “Maybe there’s something the Internet will flag that people couldn’t
access in 1967.”
“If Jimmy Lang was the victim, I wonder what he was doing on that property in 1967? The Kingdom was long gone.”
“We should talk to Mr. Bell. His family owned it then.” Nakayla flashed a sly smile. “I assume we’re still taking the case?”
Her question sobered me. “We are. And I have Harry Young to thank.”
“Harry?”
I told her about my visit with the Mayor in the critical care wing and how our discovery of what happened to his father meant so much to him. “Marsha’s plea came right after that. Her need can’t be less than Harry’s.”
Nakayla smiled again, this time with sympathy. “I know. But Harry wasn’t facing the possibility that his mother killed his father. Marsha might not like the answer we uncover.”
“Lucille Montgomery is a sweet old lady.”
“And forty-five years ago she was a single mother trying to raise a daughter in a segregated society—a society forbidding her to marry the father of her child. Who can be sure what happened in the summer of 1967?”
“You’re recommending we back away?”
“I’m saying we go into it with eyes open. Harry and Marsha come out of very different circumstances and you’re kidding yourself if you envision a resolution that will give Marsha the satisfactory closure we provided Harry.”
Nakayla was right. Taking the case meant following the leads and evidence to the conclusion, no matter how painful or ugly it might be.
“Okay. Then here’s what I know so far.” I looked at my notes, trying to decipher my terrible handwriting. “According to Marsha, Jimmy Lang met her mother in 1956 or 1957. Jimmy ran a trash hauling business. Back then, Hendersonville had a service for the town but the county left it up to the individual residents and businesses outside of town to transport their trash to the county dump.”
“He was a garbage man,” Nakayla said.
“Yes. Lucille worked as a cook in the cafeteria at Flat Rock High School. Jimmy had the contract for school trash removal for that end of the county. Jimmy and Lucille became friends because she would see that the waste from the cafeteria was divided into food remains and general garbage.”
“Why was that important?”
“Jimmy would re-cook the food as slop for his hogs. He had a small farm between Flat Rock and Tuxedo not far from the old Kingdom and not far from Lucille’s place that also borders the current Bell property. That first Christmas after they met, Jimmy brought Lucille a home-cured ham for her and her mother.”
“Lucille lived with her mother?”
“Yeah. Or her mother lived with her. Lucinda was her name. She died in 1960 before Marsha was born. Breast cancer. Jimmy Lang evidently started checking in on both women, doing handiwork for them, and he and Lucille fell in love.”
“Did Marsha say any more about the stolen photograph?” Nakayla asked.
“It was in a black wooden frame and Marsha thinks it was an eight-by-ten but she knows everything looks bigger to a five-year-old. Her great grandmother Loretta, her grandmother Lucinda, and her mother Lucille were in the picture. All Ls. Marsha said her mother decided it was time to move on to M.”
“Anybody else in the photo?”
“A few others who came with Julia Peterkin had ties to the Kingdom. That’s what Doris Ulmann wanted. A gathering of the king’s subjects. They stood in front of an old stone chimney, one of the last remaining vestiges of the cluster of cabins.”
“What do you know about Loretta?”
“Her name was Loretta Johnson. She was born in 1875 and grew up in the Kingdom. She died in 1940.”
Nakayla thought a moment. “Any men in this picture?”
“Not that she mentioned. Why?”
Nakayla shrugged. “No reason. Just wondering if the photograph could have been stolen because someone knew its value or because someone didn’t like the subject matter.”
“That’s a question for Lucille. Marsha said I can talk to her tomorrow.”
Nakayla glanced at the pad in my hand. “Anything else?”
“No. I let Marsha off easy. I didn’t go into my hardboiled interrogation mode.”
“So, you’re saving that bad impression of Sam Spade for an eighty-five-year-old woman who’ll probably say anything to make you stop.”
“Don’t you mean my James Cagney?”
“Please. Show a little mercy.”
I tucked the notepad back in my pocket. “How do you want to proceed?”
A knock sounded from the main door to the hall.
“I suggest you see who that is.” Nakayla began straightening up her desk.
I crossed the reception area and closed the door on my disaster of an office. It was after four o’clock. Sometimes Hewitt Donaldson dropped in with a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt and rehashed his day in court. But he never knocked.
I opened the door to find an old man leaning on a wooden cane. He wore a blue sport coat over a pale yellow golf shirt that was buttoned to the top. His tan skin was dotted with liver spots. Thin strands of white hair grew in clusters upon his scalp like isolated oases.
“Are you Sam Blackman?” His voice warbled and a loose flap of neck skin jiggled like a rooster’s wattle.
“Yes.”
“Good. I want you to find who killed my brother.”
I hesitated a second while processing his statement. The guy had to be close to ninety. My first prejudicial thought about an octogenarian who showed up without an appointment was that he must have dementia. Someone somewhere wondered where this man was. We would need to notify a family member or retirement center that we had him safely in our office.
“Come in, Mr….” I left the unknown name dangling in the air.
“Lang. John Lang. And I believe you found my missing brother.”
I looked at him again and one word flashed in my mind. Recalculating.
John Lang didn’t wait for me to regain my bearings. He walked past me, using his cane for support rather than as a jaunty accessory. He stopped in the middle of the room, uncertain what to do next.
Nakayla stepped from her office. “Good afternoon. I’m Nakayla Robertson.”
Lang offered his hand and then hesitated. “Robertson?” He repeated the word as if it came from a foreign language.
“As in Blackman and Robertson,” I said. “I’m her partner. Why don’t you take the seat you find most convenient and tell us more.”
The old man shook Nakayla’s hand and sat on the edge of the sofa.
“Would you like anything?” Nakayla asked. “Water? Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I prefer to get right down to business.”
Nakayla and I each took an armchair. I glanced at her, but she seemed content to let me begin the conversation.
“Mr. Lang, have the police contacted you and confirmed they’ve identified your brother’s remains?”
“They have not.”
“Then why are you sure I discovered your brother?”
“Because Lucille Montgomery told me.” He looked at Nakayla as if she would more readily understand.
“When did you speak to her?” Nakayla asked.
“A little over an hour ago. While Mr. Blackman was talking to her daughter at Golden Oaks.”
“You called Lucille in her hospital room?” I asked.
He smacked the floor with his cane. “No, damn it. She called me. She said you found Jimmy’s skeleton and that Marsha was hiring you to investigate.”
“Marsha hired us to find a missing photograph,” I said. “No one mentioned anything about a murder.” So far, I hadn’t told anyone about the rifle slug. That information would have to come from the police.
“That damn photograph,” he muttered. Lang looked away and his eyes teared.
“You know about the photograph?”
; He nodded. “Lucille told me at the time. When it disappeared, she thought it meant Jimmy had caught someone breaking into the house. I told her she was imagining things. But now…” His voice choked and his lower lip trembled.
“Mr. Lang. The police are investigating. They have the resources to identify the remains and follow all the leads. You should go to them instead of us.”
“Who? Deputy Overcash? He couldn’t find his own ass if you handed it to him on a silver platter.”
“The Greenville Sheriff’s Department’s also involved.”
“Bah.” He waved his hand like swatting away a horsefly. “They’re just as bad and they’re from South Carolina.”
“Well, we’re already working for Marsha Montgomery and trying to learn what happened to the photograph of her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.”
Lang’s eyes narrowed in his wrinkled face. “What did she tell you about it?”
“Not much. That she was only five and she associates it with her father’s disappearance. She said it was made by Doris Ulmann when writer Julia Peterkin had her meet some descendants of the Kingdom.”
“That it?”
“And that Doris Ulmann’s work has become valuable.”
He nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think it was that valuable in 1967. So, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree.”
“Maybe.” I looked at Nakayla. “But it’s the case we’ve accepted.”
He pointed his cane at me. “Drop it.”
“Why?”
“Because neither Lucille nor Marsha can afford to pay you what it will cost to get to the truth. I can.”
“Our financial arrangements with our clients are our business, Mr. Lang.” I made no effort to mask the annoyance in my voice.
“And if I get them to withdraw?”
“I’d like to ask a question,” Nakayla said.
Lang leaned back against the corner of the sofa. “All right, dearie. Ask away.”
Nakayla’s jaw tensed. “Dearie” wasn’t the way you addressed a professional investigator. She took a deep breath before speaking. “Where did you think your brother was all these years and why didn’t you report his disappearance to the police?”
A Murder In Passing Page 6