“You two get into a little trouble, and you’d think it was the end of the world.”
“I’ve got blisters on top of blisters, thanks to you,” Jewel argued. “Now where are we goin’?”
Cliff just smiled and remained silent as he crossed the highway and walked into the wide gravel parking area in front of Washington’s Feed Store. Jesse and Jewel hesitated and looked at one another, but like always, they followed as he walked around the back of the building and stopped with his arms crossed.
The area behind the feed store, for longer than the three kids had been alive, had been a catchall for farm implements, tools, vehicles, and various junk items that had accumulated over the years. Like merchants in small towns throughout the country during the Great Depression years, Nickel Washington sold a great deal of his inventory on credit. Unfortunately, many of his customers, like thousands upon thousands around the country, were unable to pay. Most customers tried to find ways to make it right, many working out installment plans, which Nickel always accepted although he didn’t particularly like it. Still, it was better to get something than nothing. A few offered something as collateral, or in many cases, as payment. Usually this meant getting a worn out tractor or a dull plow blade, or in one particularly annoying case, a mule that was so old that he died not two weeks after Nickel took ownership.
Anything that was in good enough condition to use, Nickel would sell just as soon as he could find a buyer or hold until the customer had the cash to pay off his bill. Naturally, though, much of the “collateral” was nothing more than junk that sat rusting in the weeds.
Directly in front of Cliff was a badly rusted 1919 Model-T Ford stake bed truck. The stake bed looked a lot like every other Model-T except it had a heavier, all-wooden bed. This one once had an all-wooden cab, too, but it had long-since succumbed to weather and was broken away to the point that all remaining were a bench seat with doors and a bed.
Jesse and Jewel looked at the truck that Cliff so proudly stood before and again looked at each other, somewhat baffled.
Finally Jesse asked, “I give up, what are we doing here?”
“Don’t you guys get tired of walking all the time?”
“What are we gonna do, drive around in that?” Jesse asked.
“Why not?”
Jesse and Jewel began to laugh.
“I bet we can get it to run. I looked at it this mornin’. It needs a few parts, but I bet we can make it go.”
“Even if we could, Mr. Washington isn’t gonna give us his truck,” Jesse exclaimed.
“He won’t give it to us, but he said he’ll let us use it to make deliveries, and he’ll pay us five cents a run. And George Henry McMillan will pay two cents a run and give us all the gas and oil we need.”
“Well, smart guy, that all sounds good, but where are we gonna get the parts to make it go Jewel asked.
“First of all, we won’t. You keep forgetting that you’re a girl.”
“So?”
“A girl can’t fix a truck. Y’all aren’t smart enough, and you’re not strong enough to make deliveries,” Cliff answered sensibly.
Jewel angrily put her hands on her waist and glared. “I know as much about fixing a truck as you do.”
Exasperated, Cliff turned to Jesse. “You tell her.”
“Don’t bring me into this. I’m still wondering where you’re gonna find parts.”
“I don’t know. There’s old Model-T’s all over the place. We’ll find somebody to give us a few parts.”
Jewel smiled and started to walk away. “I’ve got a Model-T.”
Jesse and Cliff watched as she turned.
“Where?”
“Under the shed behind our barn. The axel’s broke, so it’s just been sittin’ there for years. I could talk my dad into lettin’ us get some parts off of it. But, you know, I’m just a girl and I don’t know nothin’ about trucks. And I’m not smart enough to help and I’m too weak to make deliveries.”
Cliff watched as she walked toward the highway, realizing that he had no option, “Okay, you’re in.”
Jewel turned around with a smirk on her face, “Equal partners.”
“Equal?”
Without waiting for anything further Jewel turned back around and started for the highway.
“Okay,” Cliff finally conceded.
“And two RCs a day.”
“What?”
Jewel stopped and looked at him, “Two RCs or nothin’.”
“No way. If you’re getting an equal share, you buy your own RCs,” Cliff protested, walking toward her.
“Okay,” Jewel answered and turned and continued to walk away.
Cliff looked back at Jesse.
“You shouldn’t have told her that she couldn’t help.”
“One RC.”
Jewel stopped and thought for a moment and finally turned around.
Then Cliff added, “But you don’t get to drive.”
Once again Jewel began walking away.
“Okay, you can drive, but only one RC.”
Jewel looked at him and smiled. “Deal.”
Cliff walked to her and they shook hands. Then Jewel added, “I’m smart enough to get you to buy me a free RC every day.”
Chapter 8
ELZA, TEXAS
November 17, 1941
Corporal Brewster McKinney hadn’t gotten much sleep, but then neither had the poor kid upstairs. After he and Chief Hightower questioned the kid, McKinney walked across the street and took a room in the only hotel in town. The bed was old and the mattress sagged in the middle, but that wasn’t what kept McKinney from getting any sleep. Cases like this one kept his mind churning. Every time he dozed off, another thought came into his head, and he’d be up for another half-hour, thinking.
The first thing he planned to do the next morning was head over to the garage to get prints off the coupe, but he had little hope. Good prints are hard to get, and finding a match could be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The bottom line was that he had nothing. The kid in the jail almost certainly didn’t do it. The only reason to keep him was to protect him from becoming a second victim. If the killer was smart, he’d be long gone by now. But killers were rarely smart.
So if the woman hadn’t gone off with a carnival, and she instead had died, where was her body? And this Crawford fellow - what was his connection? And what did those two murders have to do with this one? Could it be the same killer coming back to finish the job?
Brewster rolled around in bed until five that morning when he finally got up. Downstairs, the lady who ran the hotel was already making breakfast. Her few other guests were oilfield workers who ate early, and Brewster was not unlike them in that respect. For the Ranger, a workday began at five in the morning and ended whenever it ended.
Brewster ate four pancakes, three scrambled eggs, and a half-dozen sausage patties before heading across the street to the Police Station. As he walked in the door, he could hear Chief Hightower snoring. The chief lived in a few rooms in the back. The Ranger first went to the hotplate to make a pot of coffee. He’d had two cups with breakfast, but that was just to get his blood flowing. He would drink at least six before the morning was over. After going to the bathroom, filling the pot, and setting it on the hotplate, he headed up to check on the prisoner.
At the top of the stairs he could see the boy sitting on the cot with his feet on the ground and his head in his hands. The poor boy probably hadn’t slept either.
“You need anything? I’ll have some coffee made in a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr. McKinney. I’d like some.”
“Sure.”
As McKinney turned to head back down, Jesse asked, “Mr. McKinney, what happens to me now?”
Brewster hesitated; he knew that it was not wise
to get into conversations with prisoners. He’d seen a lot of criminals make fools of jailers by cozying up to them. They didn’t manage escapes like in the picture-shows, but he’d seen them really mess up a prosecution. Those, though, were real criminals - psychopaths who were always looking for an edge. This kid wasn’t a psychopath.
“Your lawyer will be here in a little while, and I suspect you’ll go home.”
“Corporal, do you think I did it?”
“No, kid. I’m with the chief on that.”
“Then why’d y’all keep me all night?”
Brewster saw his opening. “Because you lied to me last night. You didn’t make a promise to a woman who ran off with a carnival. You made a promise to a woman right before she died. And you know who killed her. You also know who killed that Crawford fellow. Whoever killed them probably killed your friend and is still out there right now, and you’re next on his list. We kept you here because here you’re safe. But when you walk out that door, you’re his. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sooner or later you’re his.”
Brewster headed on downstairs. Best let the kid stew on that for a while.
A few minutes after six, just after Brewster settled behind the chief’s desk, Chief Hightower came into the office. He was looking ruffled. Most likely he’d only been awake a few minutes, but he was in a freshly pressed uniform.
“Good morning, Corporal. Have you checked on Jesse?”
“Yeah, he’s a little stressed.”
“I don’t think he slept much. Gemma left around midnight. After that I heard him pacing a lot.”
“He’ll be pacing a lot more now. I told him that I didn’t believe him about the woman running off. I also told him that I think he knows who killed the woman and who killed Crawford.”
“How’d he react?”
“He didn’t say anything, but he’s scared.”
Jefferson poured himself a cup of coffee and settled into one of the chairs. Normally he wouldn’t put up with someone walking into his office and taking over, but for Brewster McKinney he made an exception. Frankly, if not for McKinney, Jefferson wouldn’t have a clue about the case.
“I would be scared too.”
“Is there any connection between the woman that ran off and Crawford?”
Jefferson thought on it for a while and finally replied, “Honestly, I can’t recall them ever being around each other. I’m not sure if they ever met.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothin’. He always strutted around in a suit and hat like the big city people you see in the movies, but I never knew him to have a job. There were a lot of people out of work in those days. His wife owned a dress shop across the street. She still does. I suspect that was their only income.”
“Was he from here?”
“As I recall, a lot of folks from Jacksonville came to his funeral. I expect that’s where he came from.”
“What about the woman? Where was she from?”
“Irwin’s family’s been here for a while. That farm belonged to his father, but I don’t know much about her. She used to own a produce store across the street. That’s about all I remember.”
Jefferson finished his coffee and stood. “Speaking of Irwin, I need to go get him and take him over to Rusk. Do you mind keeping an eye on Jesse?
“No. Go ahead, Chief. I’m going to sit here and think on this a while.”
#
RUSK, TEXAS
November 17, 1941
Nathaniel Elbridge Cockwright, County Attorney for Cherokee County Texas, was a man of stature and standing. At forty-five he aspired for much but had accomplished little. This was not, of course, for lack of persistence. Nathaniel’s singular goal when he graduated from the University of Texas School of Law, at the top of his class, was to be the youngest man ever elected Governor of the greatest state in the union. He missed that boat back in ’27 when Dan Moody got elected at age thirty-three. Still, his aspirations to be governor had not subsided.
The problem Nathaniel had was that he had made a crucial mistake early in his career. He moved to Cherokee County. Not that Cherokee County was a bad place. There quite frankly are few places in Texas to have as beautiful of a view as the view from Love’s Lookout just north of Jacksonville. And he couldn’t ask for a better place to raise his children. The problem with Cherokee County was that the place was a political dead end. Nathaniel had moved there at the suggestion of one of his law professors who happened to know that the County Attorney would not run for re-election. Nathaniel was told that if he moved there and opened a practice he would be a shoe-in for the kind of job that most attorneys wait years for. Once in, he’d bide his time a few years while earning a reputation as a tough prosecutor and then run for the state Attorney General. The next step, of course, would be the Governor’s Mansion.
The problem was that for a prosecutor to get a reputation as a tough litigator, he has to have a crime to prosecute. The thing that made Cherokee County such a good place to raise children was that there was almost no crime. The closest he came to getting any headlines in the eighteen years he’d spent as County Attorney was when a train hit some fellow down in Elza and a Texas Ranger thought he had a murder on his hands. Unfortunately none of the doctors who examined the body would testify that the guy had been murdered or if he got the dent in back of his head from bouncing around after the train hit him.
During all those years, Nate, as his wife and only his wife called him, had seen three real murders cross his desk. One was a jealous wife who confessed, so it never got to trial. The second was a fellow getting run over by a tractor plow, but that imbecilic judge, Nehemiah Buckner, tossed the case out, claiming that it was an accident, which Nathaniel considered to be a ridiculous judgment even though he had no solid evidence to suggest otherwise. The third case, and the one that had promised to be by far the best opportunity to make some headlines, was a lynching that had taken place in Jacksonville back in ’36. Unfortunately the police chief stood by and watched while half of the city’s council members took an active part. There was no problem finding the key players, but if Nathaniel had sought to prosecute, the chance of getting a penny of campaign money out of the county’s largest city would be next to impossible.
Therefore, Nathaniel was forced to run for minor state offices in order to build a reputation as a contender in state politics. He had run for a State Senate seat, a State House seat, State Comptroller, and State Railroad Commissioner, all of which were disasters. The local seats were uphill battles from the beginning because the incumbents in both the State Senate and State House had been sitting in those seats since the ‘20s and were so well known and liked in their districts that campaign donations were almost impossible to find. Worse still, every time Nathaniel put up a campaign sign, some good old boy would shoot holes in it.
Those failures paled in comparison to the humiliation of his live radio debate with his opponent for Texas Railroad Commissioner. That attempt went badly even before the radio debate when Nathaniel lost the primary election and made the degrading decision to switch parties and run for the office as a Republican, which immediately alienated just about everybody in his home county, the one county where voters knew his name.
So on the day of the big debate, Nathaniel and his wife packed up the kids and drove all the way to the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth where radio station WBAP was to broadcast the event live to every major city in the state. Nathaniel’s opponent, a former judge and oil company lawyer, the Honorable Aaron Daniel Haymans, a resident of Fort Worth, had at least two hundred supporters in the audience. Nathaniel had only his wife Rebecca and three daughters, Hannah Denise, Melissa Mae, and Georgia Carolyne. Naturally, when Haymans got up to speak, he was welcomed with cheers and resounding applause. When Nathaniel was introduced he was welcomed by, on state-wide radio mind you, his wife clapping and the faint echo of his oldest daughter
yelling, “Daddy.”
That alone was humiliation enough, but then the moderator, a newspaper political reporter from Dallas named Matthew Hendley, kept mispronouncing Cockwright’s last name. Instead of calling the East Texas litigator by his proper name, Nathaniel Cockwright, that incompetent journalist kept calling him Nathaniel Cockfight, which naturally garnered near-endless laughter and even some applause from the coliseum full of Haymans’ followers. Nathaniel should have expected it when he saw that the moderator was wearing a Texas A&M class ring. You can’t trust an Aggie to do anything right.
The fact of the matter was that Cockwright’s political career had almost no chance of succeeding so long as he remained in Cherokee County. He had come to East Texas to make a reputation as a tough criminal prosecutor, but he lived in a county with absolutely no notable crime. Oh, there was the occasional break-in, and a few times a year he’d handle an armed robbery case, but most of the crime in the county consisted of drunk and disorderly charges or some sort of traffic violation or an occasional domestic case. All of those cases were well beneath the dignity of the office of County County Attorney, and thus Nathaniel passed them on to one of his two deputies. The truth of the matter was that it had been a good six months since he had so much as walked into Judge Buckner’s courtroom.
So naturally, when he sat down at his desk at exactly 7:59 a.m. on Monday morning with his cup of piping hot coffee and fresh-off-the-press copy of The Jacksonville Statesman, Nathaniel almost spilled an entire cup of coffee on his lap when he read the headline: BRUTAL MURDER IN ELZA.
Nathaniel quickly read over the article and then pressed the mechanical lever on his newly installed office intercom. He had wanted an office intercom from the moment he was sworn-in as County Attorney, but the budget simply hadn’t had any room for the device. It was 1941, and the twentieth century was just getting to Rusk, Texas.
“Anita,” he ordered to the speaker on his desk.
“Yes, Mr. Cockwright?” His secretary answered after far longer than Nathaniel preferred.
That Night at the Palace Page 15