Big Jim’s head rocked from side to side as he said, “Ehhh, you know, a little. Depends how much you drink with ’em.”
Crail nodded and said, “Huh.” He wiggled a finger at the tackle boxes. “Got anything to, you know, counter that? I gotta drive to Jackson.”
“Got some crank.”
“Yeah.” Crail nodded again. “Better give me some of that too.”
19
AFTER CRIPPLED WILLIE threw him out, Rick made the short drive to Greenville and the offices of the Delta Democrat Times. There, with the help of a young reporter he’d contacted, Rick went through the archives and patched together a thumbnail history of a regional dynasty.
The roots of the LeFleur family tree were deep in old cotton money and, in time, the branches had reached into politics and law enforcement, making for a powerful local machine. The earliest references Rick found were to the long-dead Shelby LeFleur Sr. According to accounts in the archives, Shelby Sr. had inherited a patch of farmland from his father in 1907 and began buying up surrounding parcels until he’d built what came to be known as LeFleur Plantation, ten thousand acres of the richest soil on earth. By all accounts, black or white, Shelby Sr. was a fair employer and an honest, Godfearing man.
His son, Shelby Jr., inherited LeFleur Plantation and, employing increasingly modern farming techniques, increased per-acre yield while maintaining the good family name. He was active civically and attended church regularly, and not just for the sake of appearances. He did what he could, within the context of his time and place, to help the poor, regardless of their race.
Shelby Jr.’s son, Henry LeFleur, would eventually take control of the land but, before he did, he got elected to the newly created office of state tax collector, which turned out to be a more profitable venture, and a damn sight less work, than farming cotton. And the reason for that was none other than John Barleycorn.
Liquor remained illegal in Mississippi even after Prohibition ended in 1933. Still, most of the river counties and the Gulf Coast sold whiskey openly, at the county sheriff’s pleasure. It was well known that more than a few of those sheriffs retired for life after two terms, and not because of the county’s generous pension plan. Package stores on Highway 61 displayed the wares in plain sight, despite the law. The state legislature, recognizing an opportunity when it saw one, created the office of state tax collector specifically to tax the illegal hooch. In the course of his research, Rick stumbled across a Life magazine article from the 1950s which reported that the person holding that office—at the time a man named William Winter, who would go on to become governor—was the highest-paid public official in the United States, including the president.
After holding that job for two terms, Henry LeFleur found himself in a highly liquid position. As it happened, his sudden accumulation of cash coincided with the postwar radio boom that saw the number of commercial AM radio stations jump from nine hundred to two thousand, mostly in rural America, which previously had been underserved. So, with his father as an investment partner, Henry LeFleur obtained a license from the FCC and built a radio station. This turned out to be a savvy move on his part because it gave the LeFleurs control of the primary form of electronic media in the region, which in turn made it remarkably easy to get elected to public office.
Thus Henry LeFleur became sheriff, a position just slightly less lucrative than state tax collector. But it required far less travel and it had the added benefit of allowing him to jail or otherwise harass and intimidate anyone he felt like, including political opponents and their supporters. Henry remained in office long enough to guarantee a comfortable retirement. After leaving law enforcement, he spent time as the general manager of the radio station, where he also ran his own classical-music program, but in a few years he grew bored and sold his interest in the station to his father.
Before calling it a day, Rick tracked down archive photos of Shelby LeFleur Sr. and Jr., as well as a clean copy of the family portrait taken at Shelby Jr.’s birthday party. Then he drove home. He found Lollie waiting for him in the parking lot of the Vicksburg, leaning against her car with the box she’d pulled from Ruby’s closet. Before Rick could ask about it she said, “It’s a surprise.”
As they headed upstairs to the apartment, Rick recounted his conversation with Crippled Willie, pointing out the inconsistencies between his version of the story and Buddy Cotton’s. “I understand how they might forget the names of clubs where they were one night fifty years ago,” he said as they reached the door. “But you’d think they could remember whether or not they’d gone to Wisconsin and recorded together.”
“So if it’s not faulty memory, what is it?”
“The good money says it’s somebody hiding something.” He keyed the door and opened it. Crusty Boogers was sitting just inside. And he looked pissed. His nostrils were pasted shut and each breath came with a lewd rasping sound. His expression was both indignant and accusing, like he was an opposable thumb away from calling animal welfare if somebody didn’t pick his nose. And quick.
Lollie made coffee while Rick took care of Crusty, after which he joined her in the kitchen. He leaned against the counter wondering what was in the box she was hovering over. She asked about his research at the Delta Democrat Times and, as he recited the LeFleur family history, she used the new photos he had brought from the paper to follow along, matching faces to names. Shelby LeFleur Jr., as a man in his fifties, was the spitting image of his father. Henry had Shelby Jr.’s nose and mouth but, Lollie figured, the eyes must have come from the other side of the family.
Lollie tapped the photo and said, “What about this Monroe LeFleur? Where’s he fit in?” Monroe didn’t look much like Henry or either one of the Shelbys. Lollie figured he was more a reflection of his mother’s genes and some characteristics that had skipped a generation or two.
“Monroe is Henry’s son,” Rick said. “From what I gathered, whatever gene had been triggering ambition in the family all those years got bred out of the line by the time he came along. Monroe’s got a little family money and a big house and doesn’t really have a job, unless you count the way he’s selling off the plantation a few acres at a time. There was a fluff piece on him in an old issue of Mississippi magazine, part of a series they did on descendants of the great Delta families. He tells people he’s a gentleman fah-mah and he occasionally floats a plan to build a casino on their land, but since they’re not Native Americans and their land isn’t on the river, the idea hardly reaches the level of pipe dream,” Rick said. “Reading between the lines you get the sense that, depending on the season, Monroe spends his days hunting, fishing, drinking, gambling, cheating on his wife, and going to Ole Miss games.”
“Well hotty-totty,” Lollie said. “But does that get us any closer to finding who killed my grandfather, which, after all, is why I hired you.”
“Seems pretty obvious that the killer is the partner of the mysterious faux Lollie. And I still think if we find out why Pigfoot Morgan killed Hamp Doogan, we’ll be able to figure out who faux Lollie and her partner are.” He grabbed the coffeepot and joined Lollie at the table, topping off their cups. She was resting her arms and drumming her fingers on the top of Ruby’s old box. Rick had been staring at it, waiting for an explanation. Lollie tortured him for another moment with silence and a smile, waiting for him to ask. Finally he said, “So, are you going to tell me what’s in there?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She lifted the top just enough to slip her hand inside. She pulled out a folio and held it up before handing it to Rick.
“What’s this?”
“A picture taken by Hamp Doogan.”
Rick opened the folio and stared for a moment. “Wow.” He looked at Lollie and said, “You’re trying to tell me this is Ruby Finch?”
“It was,” Lollie said. “Fifty years ago.”
“She was like … a porn star?”
Lollie rolled her eyes. “It’s not like she had a Web site. She was more like … a free
spirit living in a repressive time and place.”
Rick inspected the picture more closely. “Free spirit maybe,” he said. “But I bet that ass was expensive. Was she a hooker?”
Lollie clucked her tongue disapprovingly and said, “Posing for a couple of risqué photos doesn’t make you a prostitute.”
“No, it puts you in the porn business,” Rick said.
“Only if you sell them.”
“And were these for public consumption?”
Reluctantly Lollie said, “Well, yeah, but Ruby said Doogan never sold the pictures locally, only in New Orleans and St. Louis.”
“She say anything about being blackmailed? That has a tendency to lead to murder,” Rick said, thinking back to what had happened in McRae.
“No, in fact, she said Doogan split the money fifty-fifty with the models. It was just an easy way to make some money during hard times.”
“She was poor?”
“No, she actually came from money, but got cut off for associating with the wrong people.”
“People like Hamp Doogan.”
“Carpetbagger,” Lollie said. “Got run out of Boston on morals charges, settled here and prospered.”
“Until someone killed him.”
“True, the plan wasn’t without its flaws,” Lollie said.
Rick opened the box and looked inside. “She just let you have all these?”
“We hit it off,” Lollie said with a shrug. “She trusts me. Said I reminded her of herself when she was young.”
Rick gawked at one photo after another. There were several different women. “These are wild,” he said. “I mean, most nudie photos of that era were so coy you were lucky to see the side of a breast, let alone a nipple.” He flipped to another one. “Oooo, nice beauty mark on this one.”
Lollie looked. “Yeah, very Cindy Crawford.”
Rick looked at a few more before he stopped and thumped one with his finger. “That’s a late-eighties pose right there, and I’m talking Penthouse, not Playboy.”
“Such a connoisseur,” Lollie said in mock admiration.
“Just something you pick up along the way.”
Lollie gave a soft laugh and said, “As I was looking at these, Ruby suggested I get my boyfriend to take some pictures of me so I can prove how good I looked when I was young.”
Rick glanced up from the photo and said, “You’re in luck. I have a camera.”
Lollie smiled. “Yeah, I was going to ask if that was a telephoto lens in your pocket.”
Rick returned to the first picture. On the back he noticed something written in pencil. He traced his finger over it and said, “051251RF.”
“Date and initials,” Lollie said. “May 12, 1951. Ruby Finch.” The box contained several dozen folios with pictures of half a dozen different women in different poses, all of whom were identified only by initials.
Rick looked at the backs of several of the photos. “Did RF give you the names for KG, LL, BW, or any of these other fine ladies?”
Lollie fanned herself with one of the folios and slipped into a southern belle accent. “No, suh. She said that wouldn’t be pra-pah.”
They laughed at that, then Rick said, “Reverend Johnson said one of the stories he’d heard was that Pigfoot killed Doogan over a woman. Maybe Ruby Finch or one of these others is the woman in question.” He held up a photo. “I could see how a man might kill over this.”
Lollie shook her head. “Ruby doesn’t think Pigfoot was the killer.”
“She have any evidence or alternative suspects?”
“Not that she shared. But she did offer one interesting tidbit.” Lollie told Rick what Ruby had said about giving her testimony at the prosecutor’s office. “The gist of what she said revolved around what she’d heard from Shorty Parker, who seemed convinced that Pigfoot wasn’t the murderer.”
“That’s all hearsay, right?”
She shrugged. “I got my law degree from television. What do I know?”
Rick scratched the back of his neck. “She said it was recorded? Like a court reporter or on tape?”
Lollie shook her head. “I didn’t think to ask. I assumed a court reporter, but I suppose it could be the other. Either way, you’d have to assume it was lost in the same fire as all the other material.”
Rick nodded. “Did she say if her testimony was used at trial?”
“Nope, she was living in New York by the time of the trial, so she had no way to know. But she implied that it seemed unlikely since the prosecutor and the defense were essentially on the same side when it came to black murder defendants.”
“Did you ask if she had any ideas about who might’ve killed your grandfather or Suggs?”
“I did, but she didn’t. How about the reverend?”
“Nope, but I got the feeling he wasn’t telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Which brings us back to somebody hiding something,” Lollie said in frustration.
“Yeah, and for fifty years.”
They sat there for a while, idly flipping through the box of photos and weighing the status of the investigation. Lollie slumped glumly in her chair as she recited the litany of dead ends and contradictions and unanswered questions they’d piled up. It was the first time Rick had seen her gloomy side. Her unflagging enthusiasm for the process and her air of invincibility was giving way to a growing sense of discouragement. She shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on nothing. “So in other words, we don’t know any more now than when we started.”
“Sure we do,” Rick said, trying to cheer her up. “We just don’t know what it means. There’s a difference.”
She looked at him with the expression of a woman who wasn’t about to join the optimists’ club. “This isn’t funny,” she said. “Tucker Woolfolk was my grandfather. He was just an old man. He wasn’t hurting anybody. Whatever he might’ve done fifty years ago …” Her voice trailed off and it looked like she was on the verge of tears, but she blinked them back and said, “I want to find out who killed him, so stop making jokes.”
“I’m not joking,” Rick said. “Look, I know it seems like we’re sort of lost in the woods, but we’re making progress. That’s how this works. It’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle where you first have to go out and find the pieces; they don’t just come in a box for your convenience. After you find them, you still have to put them together.”
“We don’t even know what the picture is supposed to look like.”
“Yeah, but finding the pieces is progress.”
“All right, fine.” Lollie folded her arms across the top of the box and laid her head down with a long sigh. “So what do we do next?”
“Well, I think Ruby Finch had the best idea.” Rick stood up and said, “I’ll go get my camera.”
Lollie didn’t even raise her head to reply. “Very funny.”
“No, seriously.” Rick stepped out of the kitchen for a moment and returned with his camera and his Eric Idle impersonation, determined to put a smile back on her face. “Interested in a little pho-tog-raphy, nudge, nudge, wink, wink? I can tell you’re a goer!” He began to circle the kitchen table, snapping one picture after another. Flash! “Lovely, lovely, but we need a bit of the peachy flesh.”
“Cut it out,” Lollie said without much feeling.
“Off with the shirt then,” he said. “Let’s see those headlights, eh?” Flash!
“I’m serious.” Though it sounded like she was smiling.
“Musn’t keep those melons in the package, eh?” Flash!
“You’re insane.”
“Right! C’mon, dear, get yer ya-yas out!”
Hard as she tried, Lollie couldn’t resist. He was a lunatic. She started laughing and she lifted her head just as Rick released the shutter. Flash! Her eyes twinkling and her smile wide. She blinked at the yellow spots in her field of vision and said, “If you don’t put the camera down, I’m going to punch you in the head again.”
“Ahh, the magic words.” R
ick put the camera on the counter and looked at her. After a moment he said, “Just trying to cheer you up. You okay?”
She shrugged. “Tired and frustrated. What time is it?” Lollie glanced at the clock on the wall. It was midnight. “Jeez,” she said. “I should be getting home.” But she didn’t make a move to leave.
“You’re welcome to stay.”
Lollie looked at him, considering the offer from all the angles. He’d said it without the slightest innuendo, which scored him points. She liked him and his sense of humor and the way he kissed. And she appreciated the way he’d tried to buoy her spirits. She said, “You know—”
Rick held up a hand to cut her off, figuring the answer was no and wanting to save her the trouble of explaining. “Or, if you’d rather not …” He picked up the box and said, “I’ll walk you down to your car.”
She said, “No, I’d like to stay.”
LOLLIE WAS ASLEEP as soon as her head hit the pillow. Rick wasn’t tired, so he grabbed his cigar box, loaded his pipe, and surfed the Net. The first thing he found was a sticky cat booger on the space bar of the keyboard. After cleaning it off, Rick found a Web site run by a blues fan in Wisconsin. The site had a page featuring the history of Paramount Records. Rick sent the guy an e-mail asking if he could confirm whether or not Cotton, Jefferson, or Tate had ever recorded for the label. To Rick’s surprise the guy responded ten minutes later. He said he had a complete discography of every side the label had released as well as a list of recording sessions that had never been pressed onto vinyl. Cotton, Jefferson, and Tate weren’t on either list. But he said the original logs showed that the three men had been booked into the studio in 1953 and that their names had been crossed out without any explanation in the margins.
Rick thought it was unlikely that the session logs and the discography would both be wrong, though it was possible they’d recorded under false names, especially if one or more of the men were under contract to other labels at the time. But why had they been listed to record and then scratched out? And why did Blind Buddy Cotton say they had recorded there? It all came back to someone with something to hide. But who and what?
Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5) Page 19