by R. Jean Reid
Now her phone chose to ring. Nell snatched it up, hoping it was Harold Reed. She had to share this monstrous information with someone else.
Her caller was Alma Dupree, almost as if willed into being by the ghosts of her past. “I think we have some things we need to talk about,” she informed Nell. “Can you please come over here?”
Nell was completely flustered at having the damning letters on her desk and now the woman herself on the phone. “Mrs. Dupree. It might be hard for me to get away …”
“Please. This is very important. I’ll be here all afternoon waiting for you. We’re at 12 Wisteria.”
The phone went dead before Nell could think of anything else to say.
Before she had gathered her thoughts, it rang again. This time she cautiously picked it up. Harold Reed.
“It’s about time,” she barked at him. Then immediately added, “I’m sorry, it’s just that a lot has happened in the last few hours.” As coherently as she could, she explained what she had learned about Pelican Property and its all-too-close connection to the Dupree empire, ending with, “And now she wants me to come over there and talk to her.”
Aaron had obviously told his mother what Nell had revealed.
“But this was before you made the connection between Alma Smyth and Alma Dupree?” Harold asked. “Are you going to see her?”
“How can I, knowing what I know?” Nell answered.
“Would you consider wearing a wire?” he asked.
“A wire? Haven’t I destroyed their lives enough without another betrayal?”
“This is murder, Nell,” he reminded her. “And murder not just in the past, but from here and now.”
“I know,” Nell admitted. The innocence of the son wouldn’t mitigate the guilt of the father, much as she wanted to spare Aaron another blow. Nell also desperately wanted one more chance to meet Marcus for beers at Joe’s. She made her decision. “Tell me what I need to do.”
Harold asked her to get to his office as soon as she could. He’d set things up on his end.
Nell found Dolan, who had just returned from purchasing new office furniture. She told him they were holding the front page; Pam already had one on her computer, the safe one with the election rundown and Marcus’s obituary. If Nell didn’t get back, or if they got behind, he should go ahead with that one. As explanation, she told him she had to go to the DA’s office and might be there for a while.
Harold was waiting for her when she arrived, immediately rushing her into a small office. “We’re working to verify the identifications Hattie Jacobs made, but so far all we’ve got are tombstones. Someone from back then is still alive enough to have ordered the murder of Marcus Fletcher and the attack on your building. I want that person,” he told Nell.
“But Andre Dupree is confined to a wheelchair, barely able to talk,” Nell said.
“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t orchestrate events. Or that he was going to sit and watch everything he worked for in his life be taken from him and his family.”
“You may get nothing more than Alma Dupree offering me tea and telling me that I’ve upset her son and maybe I could consider not printing whatever it was he found so disagreeable.”
“We might well get that, but she asked to talk to you, so she might be offering some kind of deal which we can use as leverage. She may let something slip. You’re more likely to get anything than any of us. The minute we go in, they’re going to be barricaded behind a wall of lawyers,” Harold explained. “I don’t think you’re in danger. She may be just a little old lady offering you tea and a small bribe on behalf of her husband.”
The door to the office opened and the woman deputy came in, carrying the wire.
“Are you willing to do this?” he asked Nell directly. It was her last chance to say no.
“I’m ready,” she affirmed.
Harold stepped out, and the woman deputy put the wire on Nell. Good thing it’s winter, she thought; the bulky sweater she was wearing was a much better concealment than a light T-shirt.
Back in the parking lot, sitting in her car, Nell suddenly thought, I can’t be playing cops and robbers, doing bizarre things like wearing a wire to talk to the mother of a man I … I saw hints of possibility in. And whatever happens—such as Mrs. Dupree asking me if my intentions towards her son are honorable—I’ll have an audience for it.
Wisteria Lane was located in the vast tract of property Andre Dupree had developed. It was in the secluded part; only people going here would travel this far back.
The house itself was a mansion, with a sweeping view into the bay and a lawn that could only be kept at its level of perfection by constant attention and the sweat of hired help. Nell hoped the wire could transmit the distance covered by this immense lawn. In this neighborhood, it wouldn’t take long for a neighbor to spot an out-of-place blue van. Nell had a picture of someone calling the cops on the cops. She slowly drove up the long driveway, looking at the house almost as if in a dream. In some other world, she might be coming here to meet Aaron’s mother as a possible daughter-in-law. A world that was gone.
Nell parked her car, not recently washed, and she noted how out of place it looked in front of the huge house.
She rang the doorbell and was surprised when Alma Dupree herself answered. Nell would have expected at least a maid, if not a formal butler. The woman’s bearing was regal and her face showed faint echoes of the beauty she must have been when she was younger. The clothes she was wearing were tasteful and expensive, set off by subdued but equally expensive jewelry. She was tall, around Nell’s height, her back still erect and proud.
“I’m Nell McGraw,” Nell said.
“Thank you for honoring my request. Please come in.” Alma Dupree didn’t introduce herself, as if it was obvious who she was. “Let’s go back to the sun porch; Andre doesn’t like it when he can’t see me.”
She led Nell through a large formal living room with antique furniture that looked more for show than sitting. Nell’s guess was proven correct in the next room, furnished with deep leather couches and chairs, still expensive but looking like someone occasionally sat in them rather than just walking by. From there they crossed a dining room, with a table that could easily sit twelve and a chandelier that probably cost more than Nell’s car when it was new. The kitchen was all marble-topped counters, the copper-bottom pots and pans gleaming as if they were never used. The help sweated inside as well as outside. Alma Dupree then led her into an enclosed porch with wide windows and several skylights. The room was lush with plants, small trees that reached almost to the tall ceiling.
Hattie Jacobs’ farm had bought a lot. From what Nell could see, happiness wasn’t included in the deal.
Seated in one corner was a hunched old man Nell assumed to be Andre Dupree. His resemblance to his son was faint, lost in disease and age. Looped under his nose was a line going to an oxygen tank. His head barely turned when they entered and he made no attempt to speak; the only sound was the labored hiss of his breathing.
“Please sit down,” Alma Dupree told Nell, though it came out as an instruction. “Would you like coffee or tea?”
Nell dutifully sat. Even on the so-called porch, the furniture was far better than anything she had in her house. Or probably ever would have.
The offer of coffee or tea was the thinnest veil, put on to convey this was a polite visit. Alma sat down across from Nell and said, “I hear you’re making claims we cheated people out of their property.”
She was blunt. Nell answered her bluntly. “The records were obviously changed. Entries crossed over, making it seem like people who had paid their property tax were delinquent.”
“Then that should have been between them and the tax office. Why drag us into it?”
“Because you bought a great deal of the property taken from people,” Nell told her.
“That’s n
ot true,” Alma Dupree retorted. “Andre bought most of his holdings from a group of white men, some development company called … oh, I forget what it was called.”
She said it easily, the lie, as if it had been repeated enough to become truth.
“Pelican Property,” Nell supplied. “Owned by five men and one woman. Tell me, Mrs. Dupree, what was your maiden name?”
She stared at Nell for several seconds, then covered by saying, “What does that have to do with anything?”
Nell revised her guess about Alma Dupree. She had assumed she’d been a dutiful wife of the time, little aware of what her husband was doing, or, even if she was aware, powerless to do more than find rationalizations for her silence and obeisance. Maybe those were both true, but also present was the fierceness of a woman who would do anything to protect her family.
“It was probably a clever ploy for the time,” Nell mused. “The law would never take a hard look at what the men who controlled Pelican Bay were doing to make their money.”
“What are you implying?”
“One of the owners of Pelican Property was Alma Smyth, spelled with a Y, which was your maiden name,” Nell said. Then she added, “Your husband was hiding behind your skirts, Mrs. Dupree.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she retorted coldly.
“I’m sorry, but I do. You were very powerful back then, but in the passing years things have changed. A harsh glance from the Dupree family can no longer rewrite history.”
Alma Dupree sat up straight and stared at Nell. “You don’t understand, do you? If they wanted to keep their land, they could have kept it. They just weren’t strong enough. That’s not my fault.”
“It’s not your fault you took advantage of a system that would never believe a black person over a white one? That there was no law or even moral decency to stop you?” Nell threw back at her.
“If you fight hard enough you win. They didn’t fight hard enough,” she said dismissively.
“They didn’t have your weapons, all the power packed into the bigotry and hate of the era.”
“Please, spare me your politically correct view of history.”
“I will. Let’s see if you can fight hard enough to stop the onslaught of both press and legal action coming your way,” Nell told her, suspecting she wouldn’t much like a battle of true equals.
Alma Dupree tried another track. “Do you know what this will do to us? To Aaron? To Desiree? To our grandchildren? Why punish them?”
“Because the children and the grandchildren of the people you stole from are still suffering. They could have started their lives with the wealth from their land, but instead they started with nothing. Why did they deserve to be punished?”
“You are determined to go ahead with your vendetta, aren’t you? I was prepared to make you a generous offer.”
“Restitution to those you cheated?” Nell shot back.
Alma Dupree started coldly at her. “We can make your life very difficult, Mrs. McGraw.” Whatever façade she had managed until now was gone, her face showing arctic fury.
“The Jones brothers are in jail,” Nell lied. “Who else do you get to hunt people down and then bludgeon to death?”
“First you accuse me of theft and now murder? I don’t understand what Aaron ever saw in you.”
Fight ice with fire, Nell thought. She said, “Buzz Brown wasn’t as careful as you wanted him to be. We found the pictures of Michael Walker, Dora Ellischwartz, and Ella Carr being murdered. You’re in one of them.”
The expression that crossed Alma Dupree’s face was electric. Nell was in the room with a trapped animal. She’d been guessing when she’d claimed Alma Dupree was there, the small feet at the edge of one photo.
“I will not spend one minute of time in jail for the murder of stupid interlopers! Don’t think you can threaten me.” All masks and pretense were gone.
“Killing Marcus did you no good. His files helped, but the photos—like those of goddamned trophy hunters—will damn you.”
“He was an old man, he didn’t have much longer to live,” was how she dismissed his murder.
“And you’re an old woman, you won’t be in jail nearly long enough,” Nell spat back at her.
For an answer, Alma Dupree stood, jerked opened the drawer of an end table, and took out a pistol. She leveled it at Nell. “And who do you think you’re going to tell?”
From his corner, Andre Dupree tried to say something that sounded like “no.” A long raspy cry.
“Shut up! You never had the courage to do what needed to be done,” Alma Dupree told him. To Nell she said, “We all made a pact that those who benefited had to take responsibility for doing what was required. Those troublemakers had to go, but poor Andre couldn’t stand to do it, so I had to be there instead. I did it then and I can do it now.”
Alma Dupree was the cold-blooded killer in the family, not Andre. Nell could only look at her hand and the gun in it. Keep her talking, she told herself; you have an audience and they might get here in time. “Shooting me isn’t going to do any good. The Jones brothers will talk, to save themselves from being executed.”
“Please, you don’t think I was stupid enough to deal directly with those idiots. Their father was smarter. He married a dumb woman and got dumb children as a result. I had to give them instructions for every single step. Used a cheap, throw-away cell phone to text them instructions. Like lending their boat and driver’s license to some friends so the Coast Guard would think they were aground at certain crucial times. To get their cousins to help when they needed to do two things at the same time.”
“So they point to someone else, who points to you.”
“You really do underestimate me. Hubert Pickings received several thousand dollars to take a sealed envelope to them. He didn’t know who left it and the Jones brothers never knew who it was from. The cell phone could not be traced to me. All that mattered to them was that there was money in those envelopes.”
Andre Dupree again let out his raspy cry, rocking the wheelchair in a useless attempt to move. His wife ignored him.
“You’re going to shoot me in the sun room of your house and think you can get away with it?” Nell questioned. She was desperately looking for a way out, or a weapon she could use. But there was nothing faster than Alma Dupree’s finger on the trigger.
“An old woman like me a murderer? No one will believe that. The gun went off accidentally. I left you here to go make coffee. You must have picked it up and it went off.”
Nell heard a step in the next room and then Desiree walked in. “Mother, I heard voices and … oh, my God, what’s going on?” She stared at the gun. Then looked at Nell.
“Your mother is going to murder me,” Nell told her. And the people on the other end of the wire. It was little consolation Alma Dupree wouldn’t get away with it.
“Mother! Put the gun down. This is crazy!”
“Desiree, please leave. This doesn’t concern you.”
Desiree looked from her mother to Nell, then back again. She seemed to waver, as if she was going to obey her mother. Then she said, “Mother, no. Nothing is worth this.”
“Think about it, Mrs. Dupree. Back then, you were a young woman. There were a number of men there, now dead, whom you can blame. But if you pull that trigger, in front of your husband and daughter, you’ll never get away with it,” Nell told her.
“Desiree, please leave. Let me do what I have to do!”
“But you can’t … ” her daughter started.
“I can! With your help, if you say the gun fired accidentally, we’ll get away with it. No one will doubt the two of us.”
“Mom, please, no,” Desiree said, but her voice was weak.
The daughter has the choice to turn in her mother, Nell thought. Or to cover up, go along with the story about an accident.
Nell took the only chance she had. “You can’t get away with it.” Turning to Desiree, she said, “I’m wearing a wire. Everything said here is being recorded. If you go along with her, you’ll become an accessory to murder. You’re a young-enough woman to spend a long time in prison.”
Desiree looked from her mother to Nell, a growing horror in her eyes.
“Don’t listen to her!” Alma Dupree instructed her daughter. “She’s bluffing. Nothing has to change. Just do as I say.”
Desiree cast one more anguished look at her mother, then slowly crossed to Nell. “No, this has to stop.” She was now standing too close to Nell for her mother to get a clean shot. “I can’t … ” And then Desiree broke down sobbing, but she didn’t move.
“It’s over, Mrs. Dupree,” Nell said quietly.
Sirens sounded in the distance, coming for them.
Alma Dupree looked frantically from her daughter to Nell. Then she spat out, “You’d better hope there is a heaven and a hell, because you’ll get no justice in this lifetime.” Her eyes were blazing with anger. She turned to her husband. He seemed to know what she would do; he let out his strangled cry one more time. She aimed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. His chest exploded with red. She then put the gun in her mouth. Desiree screamed an animal sound. But Alma Dupree was not going to jail. For one horrific second, the scream was cut off by the retort of the pistol. Then there was just Desiree’s anguished wail.
Nell grabbed her and pulled her out of the room, away from the blood and bodies.
They stood in the sun, in the cold sunlight, Desiree sobbing in her arms. The sirens wailed to a crescendo, followed by an abrupt silence filled with shouts and pounding feet.
twenty-six
Nell sat before the fireplace, reading the paper that had just come out. She had skipped this routine last week, being too close to the deaths of the elder Duprees to read about it again. She’d been enough of a reporter to call in the story to Jacko, leaving it up to him, Dolan, and Pam to make the final arrangements for that week’s front page.