Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead

by Morgan James

  After I waited in stalled traffic through three lights at the intersection of Peachtree and Piedmont Road, the Should Girl committee member, who looks a lot like Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine character, called in from her tidy office in my head. “Hello, Promise dear. I see you, you know. What are you doing? Wallowing in self pity again?” Her voice is as annoying as a potato grater against a knuckle. “Let me get this straight. You are depressed because you moved away from all this traffic, crowds and crowds of people you don’t know, and will never know, stifling summer heat, and high property taxes. You are longing for a neighborhood you could never afford to live in, even if you stayed here and worked another hundred years. Get a grip, Miss Prissy. You should be ashamed of yourself. No whining! Babies whine. Big girls cope. I have to go now. I’m composing an alphabetical list of all your mistakes, and believe me, I’m very busy.” I hate it when Ernestine is right, especially when I’m in the middle of a good whine. A soft concert of mewing called to me from the rear of the car, making me smile. I was now grandmother to two tiny kittens, and mother to probably the most raggedy, pitiful looking feline in the State of Georgia. What was I thinking, indeed!

  Remembering why I was driving north on Peachtree Road, I called Garland on my cell phone. Paige, as always, was the soul of English gentility and apologized for Garland being “presently detained on the telephone.” I chose option number one and left a voice mail for him to call me back. Stop and go traffic gave me plenty of time to think about my meeting with Paul Tournay and recap exactly what I’d learned from him. Would any of what I learned help Garland’s case?

  I made a mental list. Number one: someone had sent Becca a threat in the form of a doll with a damaged face. I didn’t believe that someone was Paul. No help there. Number two: Regardless of what he thought before, Paul says he now believes he did not see Stella’s ghost wandering about the property. Nothing there to convince a judge he is unstable. Number three: Paul is a successful gay man living an open and seemingly quiet lifestyle in Atlanta. Him and thousands of others in Atlanta. Nothing unusual about that. And whose business is that anyway, thank you very much! Number four, and most important: Paul says he is willing to give the trust to Becca so long as he keeps the Tournay house. So there we were, nothing I learned about Paul would help Garland; yet Becca still wins, if she isn’t too greedy. I was glad it seemed the issue would be resolved out of court. Paul Tournay seemed a decent man, better adjusted than one would expect with a mother like Becca, and I hated the thought of him and his mother battling it out in front of a judge.

  Speaking of his mother, my thoughts turned to Becca. Was Paul correct about his mother? Did she really feel any love given to him by his grandfather was love denied her? My counselor’s heart felt compassion for Becca. My judgmental side recoiled from any mother who rejects her child, and saw Becca as a vampire in a pink suit. She was all take and no give. She also reminded me of one of the reasons I retired from counseling. My brain, and heart, were overloaded with selfish folks like Becca who believed they were entitled to a charmed life, when even the best of us get our share of pain and disappointment. Who first told the lie that life had to be fair, and good girls and boys always win a prize? Sorry, if we live long enough, we should know better. I think whoever figured out that goodness has its own rewards was wise, and knew that sometimes that reward is all we get. And that’s fine with me. I think the system works because it’s what we do with our pain and disappointment that either brings us to the circle of grace or leaves us outside looking in.

  “Good grief!” I said aloud, and shook my head to clear away the preaching. “Just listen to you. Go start yourself a church, or get your mind back on track. And whatever you do, stop talking to yourself. Hormones. Got to be hormones.” Checking the car in the lane beside me to see if the driver was giving me a wary look for carrying on a conversation with myself, I was relieved to see he was so occupied on his cell phone, I could be buck-naked singing the Star Spangled Banner and he would not notice.

  At the forked split of Peachtree and Roswell Roads, I decided to continue north on Peachtree to the commercial district of Chamblee and pay a visit to Garland’s wife. Not that Aileen and I were close friends; this wasn’t a social call. As an ex-reporter and now the darling of the local television talk show venues, I hoped Aileen Wang’s research department could answer some questions for me. Garland’s case seemed to be tumbling into his lap, a done deal, as he says; but regardless of what was to happen with Becca and Paul, and the lucrative Tournay trust, it was Stella Tournay’s face that haunted me, and now I knew that it was her death that drew me back to Atlanta.

  As I parked in front of WQQX’s converted warehouse turned television studio on New Peachtree Road, I contemplated leaving another message for Garland, then decided against it. He would call me when I rolled back around to his priority list. Instead, I cracked the windows for the feline cargo in the rear of my Subaru and headed for Aileen’s private kingdom in tele-land. This was not my first trip to WQQX so I knew how to quietly let myself into the semi-darkness of the studio, with its complicated maze of moveable partition walls defining production areas, bell jar sealed sound rooms along the outside perimeter, and lifelines of wires and cables snaking along the floor and coiling overhead. I could not conceive how any of this madness culminated with the magic of sound and pictures on my television set.

  Aileen’s assistant, the 5th Avenue stylish Barkley, who today was tres chic in a black silk dress shirt, open at the neck and paired with soft cream gabardines, noticed me wandering into the periphery of the late afternoon taping. With a black loose-leaf notebook, crammed to overflow with papers, balanced on his right hip, he waved a ballpoint pen towards me in a commanding sweep, and then lowered red tortoise shelled glasses a bit farther down his perfect pointy nose to stare at me with a frown. I could tell he was thinking I was the proverbial picture of a frumpy old broad in my shapeless dress and jacket. And, Barkley was right. I was definitely not dressed well enough for a visit to the world of the beautiful people. His face softened when he recognized me, and we waved to each other as I tried to decipher his hand gesture. Then with a tilt of his duo-toned blond and black spiked head, and a flick of long fingers attached to the most elegant hands I’d ever seen on a man, he motioned again. I finally understood he was directing me back to Aileen’s personal office, a space as unaffected and spare as Garland’s beehive of carved mahogany office suites was plush.

  Once alone in the office, I moved around Aileen’s desk—a semi-circular stainless steel affair with a glass top thick enough for Fred Astaire to dance on—to the floor to ceiling corner windows and a view of the busy iron highway stretching out not two hundred feet beyond. Now a connective point for the Norfolk Southern Railroad, this freight rail yard has bisected the city of Chamblee’s business district since the early part of the twentieth century. During World War I and II, thousands of troops moved in and out from Chamblee, either bound for war, or returning as wounded soldiers. Today, a battalion of blue and gold CSX diesel engines pushed and pulled back and forth on convergent tracks, connecting flat cars stacked high with tractor trailer boxes containing everything from automobiles to orange juice. I remembered Aileen once told me being an intimate spectator to the power of these mighty metal giants was an unmatchable thrill, and that she had her most creative ideas while standing at these windows.

  “The railroad made us what we are, Promise,” she’d whispered, as though telling me a secret, “and one day, you will see, they will redeem us.” I have no idea what we were to be redeemed from, yet you have to pause in awe at a grown woman who so loves trains. That being said, I had a suspicion any show of raw power was a thrill for Aileen, whether it originated with trains or not. Scrutinizing the ten or so locomotives working along the rail, I chose my own iron hero and followed his slow grinding and methodical pressing forward, then reversing, as he connected to a chain of rust red boxcars and open flat beds, and awaited my five minutes with Atlanta’s most popula
r talk show host, for a five minute audience was the message Barkley’s gracile hands signaled I would get.

  I was considering Barkley’s hands and how whenever I saw them I thought of a Balinese dancer striking pose after pose with similar emotional finesse, and wondered if he practiced those hand signals in private before a mirror, when the office door opened and Aileen breezed in with a flourish. The only accompaniment missing from her entrance was a drum roll. Barkley trailed behind, furiously taking notes on a clipboard. “No!” she answered to a question I’d not heard, “Tell the bastard I will not edit his interview. He knew my rules when he agreed to do my show, and it is my show, so I make the rules. Truly, I hate those cry baby types.”

  “Should I tell the Senator you make the rules and you hate cry babies?” Barkley quipped as he wrote.

  Aileen reacted to Barkley with all the charm of a Cobra. “Only if you want to be unemployed. You know what to tell him …just make nice. You’re good at the smoothie stuff, Barkley, and you know it. That’s why I pay you way more than you are worth. Just get rid of him. I don’t care who he is; he is a bore and I’m not talking to him again.” In her three steps to join me at the windows, Aileen was a changed woman: calm, sweet and docile. “Hello, Promise. It’s so wonderful to see you.” She greeted me with a warm smile and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “How are you? Garland didn’t tell me you were in town. Of course, Garland tells me nothing, so what should I expect?”

  She smelled of a delicious perfume, part sandalwood, and a hint of sweet and mysterious. I would bet that fragrance alone was enough to disarm most of her male, or female, guests; but make no mistake; Aileen was much more than a fragrance. Even though she was petite, hardly five feet tall, she gathered a room of people around her like a sea goddess drawing in her nets. That talent for commanding attention, paired with combative green eyes and sable black hair, made Aileen seem always to be the tallest person in the room. I noticed she had a new hairstyle, very nice, parted high to one side and blunt cut at a forward angle at her ears: two hundred dollars at a Buckhead salon, no doubt. I made a mental note, again, to find somewhere to get my hair done, tomorrow. There had to be someone talented in North Carolina for less than Buckhead prices. I’d ask Susan. I returned Aileen’s smile and hugged her. She and Garland sparred like dueling partners most of the time, and somebody always got nicked in the battle, yet I cautiously admired Aileen. She was successful, tough, focused, and tenacious, if not tactful. I admired the successful, tough, focused and tenacious parts. I, myself, am always more tactful than I want to be, owing I believe to my mother’s insistence that politeness is the most important virtue, next to cleanliness. “I am fine, Aileen. You look stunning, as usual. Thank you for seeing me without an appointment. I know Garland says you won’t even see him without an appointment.”

  “Oh pooh, that’s just Garland. I like you better than him. And besides, after you helped me so much with Sara during those terrible times, I would keep the President waiting to see you. What can I do for you? You look like a lady on a mission.”

  “Well, actually I am. I’m doing a small job for Garland and need some information about a death in the 1950’s. I wondered if you had access to any newspapers or county records from back then?”

  “Do we have access? Honey, you would not believe what we can get from the Internet.” Aileen struck a confident pose with both hands at her hips and winked at me. “Use my computer in here. Barkley can help you, and get you online with our passwords. Just don’t tell anyone about the sites you access, not even Garland; some are, shall we say, somewhat restricted. I’d stay and help you myself, except I’m just taking a potty break from an interview with one of our esteemed city councilmen. I’m about to ask him why lingerie purchases from Victoria’s Secret showed up on his city issued credit card statement, unless, of course, he planned to wear the items to council meetings.” She assumed a satisfied predator’s smile. Poor guy. He was thrashed wheat and just didn’t know it yet. “Gotta run. Call me tomorrow if you need anything else. We don’t tape tomorrow, so I’ll have time to chat.” With that, Aileen was gone, leaving behind the smell of fine perfume and triumph in the air.

  I sighed. “When I grow up, I want to be Aileen.”

  Barkley smirked. “Well, yes, you and half of Atlanta,” he shot back. “The other half wants to kill her!”

  I knew that was probably true. Aileen had journalistically attacked just about everybody in Atlanta worth attacking, and her viewers loved her for it. In five minutes Barkley had me logged onto Aileen’s PC and into an archive of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper articles and I began my search for clues. Remembering Garland said he thought Stella Tournay died in the fall of 1957, and based on my past experience with Garland’s steel-trap memory for those things he wishes to retain, I started scanning newspaper articles from late August of that year. Bingo. I found what I was looking for on the front page of the September fourth edition, below a story of the Arkansas National Guard, bayonets raised in the photograph, following Governor Faubus’ orders to block nine black students from entering a Little Rock high school. The children looked terrified, the guardsmen determined. Oh, what sad times those were. Running below the fold, the local reporter’s account of Stella’s death took up one and a half columns and carried an old debutante photograph of the deceased.

  After the usual basic facts of Stella’s birth, education, and marriage, as well as her family’s pedigree and a brief list of family real estate holdings in Atlanta, the reporter quoted her husband, Paul Tournay, a local art professor. Tourney had told the reporter he returned home late the night before, with their daughter, Becca, and found Mrs. Tournay absent from the house. The front door was not locked and there was no sign of a struggle. When Tournay failed to locate his wife at any of her friends or relatives, he notified the Atlanta police. Tournay offered no further information in the article. The Sergeant assigned to the case reported the yard was muddy from recent rains; yet no footprints were found leading away from the house to indicate Mrs. Tournay had left. Upon searching the area around nearby Howell Creek, police found Mrs. Tournay’s body hanging from an oak branch. She was wearing a white sundress and one unlaced tennis shoe. Ben Atkins, a ten year veteran of Fulton County’s medical examiners office, surmised Mrs. Tournay could have committed suicide; though more likely she was already dead when she was suspended in the oak tree. Atlanta police speculated Mrs. Tournay was walking down by the creek when an assailant attacked and strangled her. The reporter further noted the creek area where Mrs. Tournay was found adjoined her affluent Buckhead neighborhood.

  I scanned forward for other information on Stella’s death. A subsequent article confirmed foul play by strangulation and that police were interviewing Atlanta city workers who were repaving a road in the area on the day of the murder. The medical examiner volunteered Mrs. Tournay sustained two broken ribs at her death. Two weeks later, another article cited interviews with Stella’s parents who were irate that no progress had been made in finding their daughter’s killer. The parents stated their daughter’s ring, a diamond and ruby wedding band, was missing from her person. In this later article, the reporter wrote Professor Tournay refused to make further comments; although police sources confirmed he had been questioned, and his statement of being with a student earlier on the night of the murder was verified. The student, a female, whose name police declined to reveal, was said to be taking private painting lessons from Tournay. A third report, in October, had Stella’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, calling for further investigation of Paul Tournay and his “so called alibi.” Paul Tournay was still not available for comment.

  I reviewed the three articles and wondered why no details were given about the time of Stella’s death. Surely that piece of information would either implicate Paul Tournay, or not. Perhaps, I pondered, it wasn’t possible to narrow down a time of death to within a couple of hours. Regretting I didn’t know a forensics person like Dr. Kay Scarpetta to call about determ
ining the time of death, I scanned forward to a fourth article in November. This time Stella’s death warranted one paragraph and simply stated there were still no suspects in her murder, and that Paul Tournay had been questioned several times and was not being held by police.

  Interesting that the newspaper archives search revealed Stella had suffered two broken ribs when she died. Since she was strangled, how were the ribs broken? The newspaper accounts said nothing about her body showing signs of a struggle. Would the killer have overpowered her by striking her in the chest, and then strangled her? No, that didn’t make sense. Perhaps he broke the ribs lifting her out on the oak branch. That was also highly unlikely. The oak branch raised another question. If you had just strangled a woman, why would you stay around long enough to hang her out over the creek from an oak limb? And what about sexual assault? The newspapers said nothing about rape. Was rape not a subject reported in 1957? Or was it not reported if your parents were Chandless and Bennetts? Oh, Stella, Stella, what are you trying to tell me?

  A second website got me into photocopied death certificates and medical examiners reports. Stella’s death certificate contained the usual information of her birth date and maiden name. Cause of death was listed as heart failure. Well, that is interesting, I mused, I guess we all ultimately die of heart failure. No other information was available since the medical examiner’s reports prior to 1977 were not logged on line. I tried a couple of other ideas by cross referencing Paul Tournay and found only a short book review of his one commercial publication on Carolingian art. A review complimented the effort to “shine a brilliant light on the genius of this much neglected period of history,” and applauded the excellent color plates of representative works. Even with those kind accolades, I doubted the book made five million dollars to establish a trust. Out of curiosity, I clicked over to Amazon and ordered a used copy of the small out of print volume from an outlet in Charlotte, at seventeen-ninety plus extra for overnight shipping.