Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead

by Morgan James

  Garland was losing patience with our little banter back and forth. “Okay, You’ve made your point, Porter. What is the DA going to do?”

  I took the cordless phone out on the porch and sat in one of the rockers. I might as well be comfortable. “Here’s the deal on the table,” she announced, “Turner gets to plea down to theft on the Madonna panels, a lesser charge from burglary, and enters a plea of battery for attacking Dr. McNeal. On Sanders’ death, we sit on that for right now to see if we come up with something to link Turner. Maybe Turner did killed Sanders, pushed him down the stairs. There is one possibility that might help us: the coroner’s report notes a narrow straight-line indention bruise on Sanders’ skull, apart from the other massive injury sustained from the fall. If we can make that match the rebar Turner hit you with, Dr. McNeal, we may have a case. Of course, what I just told you is totally confidential and if you should repeat it, I would have to bring charges against you for interference of justice of an ongoing case. We never discuss an ongoing case with outsiders. I repeat: we never discuss an ongoing case with outsiders. You get my drift?”

  I could hear Garland thumping the erasure end of a pencil on his desk. He was ready for this conversation to be over. “So, how much time will Turner do for assaulting Dr. McNeal?” he asked.

  Ms. Porter sniffed and cleared her throat, very ladylike, of course. No doubt the Southern fall had given her northern constitution allergies. “No jail time, intense probation for ninety days, confined to his house and wearing an ankle monitor. After that, another two years standard probation. All this would be concurrent with the theft sentence.”

  The thumping pencil sound stopped. I heard Garland’s desk chair squeak, maybe as he sat upright. I know I certainly sat upright. “You mean Turner gets to stay home and watch soaps on TV for three months, no jail time?”

  “That’s it, Mr. Wang. That’s the deal. I know you aren’t happy, but for your information we have other problems with Turner also, like if there were jail time, where do we send him, or her? His lawyer makes a point. Because of Turner’s, shall we say, current undecided sexual identity, we don’t know whether to put him with the men or women. Either would be a problem. He was only in a holding cell for three hours the night he was arrested and some cracker beat the living shit out of him. What do you think will happen if he goes to Reidsville prison?”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this Porter. Sounds like you feel bad for Turner,” Garland carped.

  “Oh please, don’t try to shovel that shit in my lap!” She volleyed back, “I could care less about the alleged perpetrator. My job is to do what’s best for the county and the State of Georgia, and I don’t want one of my cases reversed on some kind of stupid technicality, or have the ACLU up my back because Turner gets killed in jail over some low rent assault and theft charge. If he goes down later on a murder charge—different ballgame—I want him alive. Right now, I’m cutting the best deal for the justice system, and seeking a realistic punishment for the crimes involved. What about you, Dr. McNeal? What would you want in a deal with Turner?”

  I left the rocking chair and faced the sun disappearing over Fire Mountain. Acid was rising in my throat and burning the back of my mouth. “What do I want? I want our laws enforced; that’s what I want. I want Turner to take full responsibility for his, or her, actions. Silly me, I’m big on personal responsibility. I want what’s right to be rewarded and what’s wrong to be punished.”

  “Oh yes, speaking of responsibility, part of the deal is Turner offers you a face to face apology, if you so desire.”

  I almost laughed. That seemed a ridiculous idea to me. “I’ll pass on that, thanks. I can’t imagine an apology at this point would be in any way sincere.”

  She ignored me and went on to her last point. “Turner will also pay any doctor bills you incurred due to your injuries, and compensate you for any loss of work time. You will need to fill out a form on the monetary losses. I’ll mail it to you. Get it back to me right away. Now, if you two don’t have any further questions, I have to hang up now. I have someone waiting in my office. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Have a good day.” Her line went silent.

  For a moment I thought Garland had hung up as well. Then he spoke quietly. “What about it, Promise? Do you want me to stir up some trouble downtown about Turner? Or, can you live with Ms. Porter’s solution?”

  I guess I was hoping Garland would be irate. That’s certainly the way I felt. He wasn’t. All I could hear was a jaded, oh well; today someone else gets to make the rules, tone to his voice. After calming down for a few seconds, I knew I didn’t want to fight. “I’ll live with it, Garland. Just let it be.”

  “That’s probably best. You are the victim, but you know the DA has the last word, so long as the judge takes the recommendation, and it sounds like to me, if we read between the lines, that Porter wants to keep Turner where she knows she can reach him for the murder charge. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be sharing info with us. I think that’s probably her way of asking us to live with the decision and sit tight.”

  “Your are probably right, Garland. Going to jail for beating me up is only one of Angel’s issues at the moment.”

  Garland seemed pleased that I was not going to ask him to buck the system in Atlanta. He perked up. “You got that right. I know Turner’s attorney, a fellow named Toby Brice. He’s one of the good old boy Roswell crowd. Saw him today having lunch at the Mill. We sat together and he gave me an earful.”

  I wasn’t sure what Garland was saying. “Do you mean he was talking about Turner’s case with you over lunch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought talking about your client’s business wasn’t ethical.”

  “Well, it isn’t. He didn’t use any names. Of course I know the story has to be Turner’s. Here’s what he said, you decide.” Garland was loving this bit of gossip. “Turner must have paid close attention to the news stories about OJ Simpson’s book, because he told Toby he didn’t kill Sanders and in fact wasn’t even there at the time; but if he had been there, which he wasn’t, here’s what would have happened.”

  Garland took a breath and settled in to tell his story. “According to Turner, what could have happened is this: the two of them argued about Sanders wanting to go upstairs and take some old box. Turner didn’t want Sanders doing that because it would tip off Tournay someone had been in the house. Turner and Sanders fight; both get scratches, exchange a few punches, and Sanders pulls away and starts up the stairs. Turner is behind Sanders on the stairs. Suddenly the door into the hall at the top of the stairs swings open, and Sanders screams, ‘Oh, my God!’ Turner looks up and sees what looks like a long, flowing white dress disappearing behind the door. Sanders tumbles down the stairs, hits his head on the cement floor, and Turner runs like hell.

  “Angel Turner says, of course, this is only a fictional account of what could have happened, if he had been there. I’m betting if Sanders did fall down the stairs, Angel Turner cracked his head with the rebar while he was out, just for insurance. Good way for Angel to dissolve a bad partnership. Toby says Turner believes Sanders saw someone in the upper hall and that someone scared him enough to make him lose his balance and fall. That someone, Turner told Toby Brice, was a ghost. A ghost in a white dress. Turner says the two of them had seen the same figure once before down by the creek. Isn’t that a hoot? Especially, when you consider Paul Tournay also thought he saw a ghost in the yard. Remember that? He told his grandfather he’d seen his grandmother’s ghost. A ghost, can you believe it?” Garland paused his story to laugh.

  I wasn’t laughing. “Hey, Promise, did you hear what I said? A ghost. I thought you’d get a kick out of Turner’s story. Why aren’t you laughing?”

  So, that was it. Now it made sense. Sanders was trying to get upstairs. He planned to steal the antique letterbox. If Mitchell Sanders had taken the box, Paul Sr.’s secret might have stayed hidden.

  When I didn’t say anything, Garland waded into
the silence. “Hello, Promise. Are you there? Come on, Sugar, talk to me. Your silence tells me you know something I don’t. You are the worst poker player in the state. What is it? Tell me. You wouldn’t hold out on me, would you?”

  “Now, Garland,” I answered, “You know I wouldn’t hold out on you. No more than you would hold out on me.”

  “Why does that answer not give me reassurance?”

  Call it petty, but Garland had that one coming to him, after he conveniently forgot to share the Tournay trust information stashed under his desk. Susan was right; of course, my friend Garland Wang does have hidden agendas. Don’t we all? “Thanks for being with me on the Ms. Porter conversation, Garland. I really appreciate it. I mean it. You being on the line for moral support made the medicine go down a lot easier. Give my best to Sara and Aileen. I have to go now. Believe it or not, I have a dinner date.”

  “Covering with moss the dead’s unclosed eye,

  the little redbreast teacheth charitie.”

  Michael Drayton

  (The Owl, 1604)

  20.

  Days accumulated into weeks after Paul Tournay’s guest appearance on Aileen’s show. Susan told me she’d learned from later shows he would be a frequent guest, reviewing art and entertainment around Atlanta. I had not watched Listen Atlanta again, nor had I heard from Paul. I think I felt a little betrayed by Aileen and Paul’s easy alliance, or should I say, collusion. I recalled Barkley’s side comment to me on the day I’d visited the studio: that half of Atlanta wanted to be Aileen, and the other half wanted to kill her. Whatever partnership Paul had struck with Aileen, I hoped what he netted was worth it. Not that there was anything wrong with Paul becoming a television personality. In my opinion he was certainly talented enough for prime time television. It was just that Paul’s new found talent bloomed from his grandfather’s theft and smuggling; and that didn’t sit right with me, nor did it mesh with my image of Paul being a man of integrity.

  I seemed to be the only person who considered Senior Paul Tournay’s World War II exploits criminal. Even Susan said that after giving it more thought, she decided he and Boo Turner only took what the Nazis were determined to steal for themselves. Better them than the Germans, she’d said. That seemed too pat an answer for me. What about returning the stolen property after the war? Daniel wouldn’t give an opinion at all.

  A few times over the past week, my constant companions, the Should, Second-guess, and What-if girls committee members sang me a chorus of the pitfalls of being self-righteous and reminded me that in my counseling days, there were more than a handful of clients whose faulty thinking, and thus bad choices, regularly ignited my judgmental nature. In truth, I’ve never mastered the—don’t get heavily invested in the outcome, just be there for the journey—part of counseling. At my core, I want everyone to straighten up and fly right. Just as well I retired when I did. At least I’d curbed my controlling urge and resisted doing a Tarot card reading on Paul, just to see what may be marching his way. Spreading out cards on Paul’s life, without his permission, felt invasive, even if I only half believed the cards. And besides, what if I did see trouble for him in the cards? What could I do about it?

  October finished ripe with cool temperatures and frequent rains. On the Monday before, I’d invested the morning at the public library researching the McNeal family and found January McNeal’s name mentioned in a 1901 purchase of fifty-two acres located in the area later named Fire Mountain, the same mountain I see from my kitchen window. The seller was a man named Daniel Joab Sorley. I supposed Daniel is still a good name for men in Perry County.

  The county census for the following year reported January as being twenty-seven years old, a farmer, living on his own land with his wife, Reba, and one male child. It was a mystery to me what crops January could farm on the steep slopes of Fire Mountain. I must be getting more comfortable with the idea of this Perry County January McNeal being my kin, because when I ciphered the aged backhanded cursive handwriting completing January’s census information, I was not surprised to find his son’s name, James, matched that of my grandfather’s. I did not know my great grandmother’s name was Reba and wondered how she came to marry January. So far, one land sale and one census entry were the only official records I’d located, excepting a current property tax listing showing the Forestry Service now owned some of the Sorley/McNeal acreage and Fletcher Enloe owned the rest. That information didn’t surprise me. Fletcher Enloe had been baiting me all along and probably could recite an extensive history of the McNeals.

  The librarian, a Perry County native about my age, who helped me sift through stacks and stacks of census information, recalled hiking and hunting Fire Mountain many years ago with her brothers. On one such adventure, she remembered tracing a small waterfall up one side of the mountain and finding a burned out cabin with the rock chimney still standing. How the cabin was burned, and when, she didn’t know. I feel in my soul she is right about the cabin being on the mountain. It waits for me. In my mind, I smell the cabin’s damp soot married with blooming honeysuckle vines, and see hundred-year-old charred timbers lying crosswise in the doorway, where they collapsed into each other arms. At some point, I know I’ll swallow my pride and ask Enloe about January McNeal, but not yet. For now, I will sit with the few facts I know about the McNeal family, and wait.

  Earlier in the day I hiked up the abandoned logging road along the lower crust of January’s mountain. I didn’t find a waterfall, or cabin. It must be higher up. When I stood atop the lower ridge looking back down on the road, I listened, my breath held, for the metallic whine of wagon wheels, a sound I’d awakened to several times now in the predawn stillness. There was no wagon on the road in the full light of day; only the wind and a hawk’s cry split the blue, cloudless sky. Was it possible the lumbering wagon was just an ordinary dream, with no connection to my great grandfather? Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to relive the sadness sung by those wagon wheels climbing January’s mountain. No, that was not possible. The presence of January McNeal in this place was substantial and real. I was sure the vision, the wagon, and the cabin, would nudge me to January’s story sooner or later.

  After studying the narrow potholed roadbed again, and committing the washed out ruts to memory, I looked down, back towards the valley, where my gray clapboard house and side porches seemed a great winged bird hovering on the fall-kissed ground. Minnie and Pearl grazed the remaining October grass in the pasture, oblivious to being watched. I wondered if goats felt happiness, or loneliness. The morning was cold and still, yet, under the stillness of the here and now, the mountain’s soul exhaled mist with each breath I took, and where I stood, a gathering of sweet smelling hemlocks and pines began to blow a breeze as they bent toward each other, whispering secrets to the laurel. This wasn’t Atlanta. Not home yet. Nevertheless, I could feel all of them—trees, water and stones—slowly beginning to settle in my heart.

  Later, from the back yard where I worked, I had a front row seat to the mountain’s panorama of acres upon acres of black oaks dried to burnished copper, and red maples, sixty foot tall scarlet bouquets, dressing the ridge above me. It is no wonder they call it Fire Mountain. I could imagine a person named January McNeal wanting, needing, to possess such beauty. My jeans and hooded sweatshirt felt good against the late afternoon chill as I raked fallen leaves into a round wire frame for composting, and separated out sticks and small limbs to toss into the metal burn barrel. Daniel called earlier in the afternoon. Said he wanted to drop by with some dried rosemary, sent by MaMa Allen from her herb garden. I’m not sure what that’s all about. No harm, I guess, in sharing a cup of coffee with the man. He’s easy company. Maybe today, since Susan had refused to do it for me, I could think of a casual way of giving Daniel the Frank Ball violin.

  I stood upright; rubbing still tender bruises on my side and arm, and smelled crackling cinders mixed with the aroma of wood smoke circling back to me in the breeze. Though physically busy, my mind worked elsewhere, turn
ing over and over the Tournay business for the hundredth time, questioning if my interaction helped any of them, or set anything to right in the universe. Becca was still Becca—not speaking to Paul, that I knew of, and it seemed Paul was adrift with his newfound notoriety and fifteen-minutes of fame.

  Garland’s fee had helped stave off my financial worries for another couple of months. I was very grateful for the respite. Yet the whole experience, bruises and all, surely had to be about more than paying my bills. I could not forget it was Paul Tournay Sr. who had called to me from the dream of Stella’s death and set the events into motion. I knew if I could retrace my steps, I would walk the same path. I would have to.

  I’d spoken to Garland a couple of times about the stolen art work, and, of course, he was right in that Tournay’s business records didn’t give enough information to trace down exactly what antiquities were originally stolen, or who finally purchased them, or if they were stolen at all. I think Garland was being honest with me, mostly because if there was enough proof, I believe Aileen would be on the story like white on rice. Being the voracious reporter, Aileen would throw Paul in the lion’s den in a New York minute, in exchange for an exclusive expose’ of his grandfather’s success in duping the Nazis.

  That left Boo Turner to tell the tale, and I suspected his admissions to me that day at the antiques mall were probably all we would ever get from him. The only physical evidence remaining was the golden enameled triptych and what silver and china was found in the half-empty crate in the Tournay basement. Not much to go on. As to the triptych, the beautiful Madonna and child panels, Garland’s information from Aileen was that it would stay on loan to the museum whose curator was the expert appearing on her show, until, and if, Interpol could determine it was indeed stolen from France, or wherever. I saw somewhere, a magazine maybe, that Interpol has been instrumental in recovering over three hundred fifty-five million dollars worth of stolen art since 1991, so it was possible the Madonna and child would be returned to the rightful owner. In one conversation, Garland told me a bit of gossip—according to Aileen, Paul and Barkley were “an item” on the Listen Atlanta set, acting like happy lovebirds. Maybe I’d send Paul a card; let him know I’m happy for him. He and Barkley might be the perfect match.