Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County

by Amy Hill Hearth

  Despite my instructions, Mr. Yonce was not much help, especially after a ten-foot gator splashed into the water from a riverbank not ten feet from us. Mr. Yonce proceeded to do exactly the wrong thing: He panicked and stood up.

  “Sit down, Mr. Yonce! You’ll flip us over!” I yelled.

  He did as he was told, but after that he didn’t try to paddle at all. After a few minutes he asked my permission to turn around and face me. I don’t think he even wanted to look at the water the rest of the trip.

  “Where the heck did you grow up?” I asked.

  “Atlanta,” he said. “Downtown. Near Peachtree Street.”

  Well, that explained a few things. “Whatcha doing in Florida?”

  “Wanted to start somewhere new,” he said. “But I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” he added hastily.

  I started to feel sorry for him. This was always my downfall. I could not stay mad at someone I felt sorry for.

  “See those trees there?” I asked, trying to distract him. “Those are called mangroves. They are incredibly adaptive—”

  “What is that over there?” he asked nervously. “That thing near the mangroves.”

  I saw the back of a manatee bobbing in the water. “Oh, that’s just a sea cow,” I said reassuringly. “Don’t worry, they don’t eat people. They only eat vegetation. They are the gentlest creatures on earth.”

  “Oh,” he said with a weak smile. “Glad to hear it.”

  With me paddling alone it took a good forty-five minutes to arrive at Dolores’s dock, and, as luck would have it, she wasn’t there. I tossed a rope around one of the posts and secured the canoe, not that it was going anywhere. The tide and the current were gently pushing us against the dock for now. At least something was going in our favor.

  “Do we have to get out?” my passenger asked somberly.

  “What? Out of the canoe? Why, yes, of course we do.”

  “I’d rather not,” he said, looking around.

  “Who’s there?” Dolores bellowed from the vicinity of the outhouse. “What do y’all want?”

  “Dolores,” I called out, “it’s me, Dora Witherspoon, and I’ve brought a . . . friend. He wants to meet you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to meet him,” she shouted. But she was walking toward us, craning her neck to get a look at him. Another moment and she was on the dock, looming over us. Then she burst out laughing. “What’s he wearing? A suit and tie? Have you lost your mind, Mr.—?”

  “—Yonce,” he said automatically. “Pleased to meet you.” He was still sitting in the canoe, gripping the sides.

  “Mr. Yonce is an attorney,” I said. “A lawyer. He’s here to help us.”

  “I know what an attorney is,” Dolores said. “You must think I’m dumb as this post here,” she said, shoving a calloused hand against one of the wood pilings, which shook slightly. The whole structure, shack and all, could come crashing down into the water for all I knew. And yet it had survived many storms, even Hurricane Donna, so perhaps the underpinnings were sturdier than they appeared.

  “I do not think you’re dumb and you know it,” I said, a little surprised at myself for sounding so fresh. “Mr. Yonce came quite a distance to talk to you. So please hear what he has to say.”

  “Are y’all going to get out of this here canoe?” Dolores asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  “I’m quite comfortable here,” Mr. Yonce said, “but thank you so much.”

  Dolores stifled a chuckle. “You mean you don’t want to come inside and maybe sit in my, er, parlor?” She laughed heartily at her own joke, which startled Peggy Sue, the night heron, who made an unhappy squawk.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, “now we’ve upset Peggy Sue.”

  “Peggy Sue is a bird,” Dolores said to Mr. Yonce by way of explanation. “Over yon, up in a tree. She be sitting on her eggs like a good mama.”

  Mr. Yonce looked from Dolores to me and back again. “Yes, um, okay,” he said, clearing his throat. He began talking very fast, explaining that if Dolores agreed, he could file papers that would stop Darryl from proceeding with construction until a judge could review the rightful ownership of the land.

  “I have done some preliminary work,” he said, “and did some research on the documents that, I understand, belong to you.”

  Dolores, still standing on the dock, nodded. I wondered how many lawyers had met with a client like this, sitting in a canoe and wearing a life vest.

  “What I learned is that your main document is a deed put in trust, with a large amount of cash, many years ago,” he said. “It’s called a perpetual trust, and it was set up by General John Stuart Williams—your ancestor. The taxes have been paid automatically through the trust. Very clever idea—maybe the old general was concerned about carpetbaggers trying to grab property when the owners were late paying their taxes. Now, in your case, this was set up at a bank in Pensacola. There weren’t many banks in Florida in those days, and fortunately, the one the general chose was bought up by other banks over the years and is still in existence.”

  “So the bank in Pensacola has been taking money from the trust to pay the taxes all these years?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the young lawyer said. He paused for a moment to wipe his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I believe the deed in Mr. Darryl Norwood’s custody must be a fake,” he added. “I’m not sure where he got it, and I’m not sure it matters to us. If it’s fabricated and he knows it, he could face criminal charges, but that’s beyond what I think we should be focused on here.”

  “Well, then, what are we focused on here?” Dolores asked suspiciously.

  “Producing your deed in court and stopping Darryl Norwood’s development in its tracks.”

  Dolores grinned. “Ain’t you some young whippersnapper?” she asked, causing him to blush flamingo pink from the base of his neck to his forehead. “Well,” she added, “that’s what I want. It’s only right. The way I was raised, land is the greatest wealth a person can have, other than family. There’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?” Mr. Yonce asked nervously.

  “I can’t pay you for all this work you’re doing,” she said. “I’m land rich but cash poor. Unless I can get my hands on some of that money in the trust. But something tells me that money’s tied up in a neat little knot. Or else it wouldn’t be there no more.”

  “You are correct,” Mr. Yonce said. “We can look into it but I rather doubt you have access to it. The money is there to pay the taxes year after year, just to be sure it stays in the family.”

  “Dolores,” I interrupted, “your friends are going to pay Mr. Yonce.”

  “What friends?”

  “Dolores, I thought I told you before. If we needed to hire a lawyer, Mrs. Bailey White, Plain Jane, and Jackie Hart are going to pay for it. If I had any money, I would chip in, too.”

  “What about your son?” Mr. Yonce asked Dolores. He shuffled through his notes. “Robbie-Lee Simpson, lives in New York City. Works as an usher at a theater.”

  “What about him?” Dolores said icily.

  “Can he help you? I mean financially? Have you spoken to him?”

  Dolores sighed. “I get letters from him. He’s been gone over a year now, but I don’t want him to think I need him.”

  “But Dolores,” I said gently, “the fact is you do need him.”

  “He needs to be brought into the picture if for no other reason than he is your heir,” Mr. Yonce said.

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Dolores said so softly I barely heard her. “Go ahead,” she added. “Just do what you got to do.”

  Mr. Yonce asked a few other questions. Had she ever had a driver’s license? A Social Security card? Was there a birth certificate, other than the one filled out by a midwife?

  She said no to the remainder of his questions, but I had a feeling that her mind was now far away.

  Twenty-Six

  Our young lawyer, bless his city-born heart, was
turning out to be a real go-getter. He called Jackie the following afternoon with big news: He had persuaded a Collier County judge to sign a stop-work order on Darryl’s project until a hearing could be held.

  The only downside was that the judge wanted the hearing to take place the following Wednesday, which did not give us much time, Jackie said.

  Time for what? I wondered to myself. I’d left Mississippi during the last week of August. It was now early November. From my way of thinking, the sooner this whole thing was over, the better. But there were several details that Mr. Yonce needed to nail down.

  Jackie explained it to us over tea sandwiches prepared by Mrs. Bailey White. “He said he has to hire a genealogist to verify that Dolores—er, Bunny—is in fact a descendant of the general,” she said. “He knows a professional who could do the work pronto.”

  “What if there are other descendants?” Plain Jane asked.

  “Good question!” Jackie said. “Actually, even if there are others it only takes one descendant to step forward and file a stop-work order and have a chance to prove that Darryl is not the owner of the property. If there are other descendants, well, they can sort out what they want to do—or not do—with the property later. It’s not relevant now.”

  “Jackie, you are starting to sound like a lawyer,” Plain Jane teased.

  “Well, I talked to Mr. Yonce on the phone for an hour, and he was pretty good about explaining things to me. You know, I always wanted to be a lawyer. I mean, if I had a profession, that’s what I—”

  “What else did he say?” I interrupted.

  “Oh,” Jackie said, flustered. “Let’s see. There is a copy of the deed at the bank in Pensacola. The fact that Dolores—uh, Bunny—has the original deed is very important. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

  “There’s something I’m wondering about,” I said. Even I could hear the anxiety in my voice. “I hate to say this, but even if the genealogist shows that Bunny Ann McIntyre is a direct descendant of the general, how do we know for sure that she is, in fact, the real Bunny Ann McIntyre?”

  “I thought of that, too,” Plain Jane said, speaking quickly. “She says she’s Bunny Ann McIntyre but she’s been using the name Dolores Simpson for a long time. Darryl’s lawyers could claim she’s not the real Bunny. We need some additional proof. Do we have it?”

  We all started talking at once, just like in our old book club days. “Girls, girls, one at a time!” Mrs. Bailey White said. “Dora, you first.”

  “Well, when I took Mr. Yonce to meet with her, he asked if she’d ever had a driver’s license or a Social Security card and she said no. He also asked if she had a copy of her birth certificate other than the one we’ve all seen already—the one written up by a midwife. Again—no.”

  “What about a family Bible?” Mrs. Bailey White asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “she said there was one and her name was written in it, but she doesn’t know where it is now.”

  “Excuse me, could I get a word in edgewise here?” Jackie asked crossly. She pushed a dangling lock of hair out of her eyes. “I already talked to Mr. Yonce about all this!”

  “And what did he say?” Plain Jane said.

  “He said this was all fine and good, but that it would be very helpful if we could prove she’d ever used the name Bunny Ann McIntyre.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Mrs. Bailey White said, dejected.

  “Well, ideally, if we had some sort of identification from her younger days, especially if there was a photograph or, even better, fingerprints. Mr. Yonce said she could be fingerprinted again today and if it were a match, then there would be no question.”

  “Good Lord,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “We better hope she was arrested somewhere along the line.”

  Jackie smiled in a wry sort of way. “Funny,” she said, “that’s exactly what our lawyer said.”

  “Maybe it’s time we checked in with Robbie-Lee,” Plain Jane said. “He might know.”

  “I wonder how he’s doing way up thar in New York City,” Mrs. Bailey White said, making it sound as if he were on a dangerous expedition to the North Pole. “I mean, I wonder if he’s got himself any friends.”

  “He sounds pretty good in his letters,” I said.

  “Yes, but do you think he has a special friend?” Jackie asked hopefully. Robbie-Lee was what my mama’s generation called “a doll”—handsome, charming, debonair, and absolutely useless in the romance department. He wasn’t interested in women in the Biblical sense, but he was kind and respectful, and awfully fun to have around.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I just hope he isn’t lonely.”

  • • •

  THAT EVENING, WITH OUR BLESSINGS, Jackie began trying to reach Robbie-Lee by telephone. I wish we had included him sooner. After all, this whole mess concerned his mother. But now our lawyer, Mr. Yonce, said it couldn’t wait.

  Jackie had some trouble reaching Robbie-Lee. The long-distance operator said there was no telephone at the address of the apartment where he lived—not too surprising, since having a phone was expensive and Robbie-Lee was pinching pennies. Jackie finally called the Booth Theatre on Broadway where Robbie-Lee worked as an usher and, after persuading one of the box-office ladies that this was a family emergency, a message was left for Robbie-Lee to call her collect on his break.

  He called back within an hour, Jackie said, and was completely frantic. Jackie explained what was going on, as rapidly as she could. He was relieved, she told us, that nothing terrible had happened to his mother—he was sure that’s why Jackie had called—but he was furious about Darryl’s plans, the first he’d heard of them.

  When Jackie told him about the deed, she couldn’t judge his reaction. If he was surprised, it wasn’t obvious. Then she told him the court date—just one week away—and asked if there was any chance he could come.

  “By the way,” she asked before they got off the phone, “would you happen to know if, well, if your mother has ever been arrested? It would take too long to explain right now but it would help us prove her case.”

  There was a long pause, Jackie said, and then he replied, “Yes, I think she was. A long time ago, before I was born. When she was working as a, um, dancer in Tampa.” Then he added, “Listen, Jackie, I have to get back to work now.”

  She said it was hard to tell if that were really true.

  Twenty-Seven

  While Mr. Yonce scoured the arrest records up in Hillsborough County, we tried to keep our minds occupied. We tried various things to distract us, including a picnic on the beach, an excursion to the library, and then a cookout where we got a little tipsy on account of Mrs. Bailey White making Jell-O wine.

  Then Plain Jane got this idea that we should revive our book club, just for the time being. I was eager to participate. Working at the library in Jackson meant I’d been reading all the latest books as they came in. I read anything and everything. I was impatiently awaiting Hemingway’s latest, A Moveable Feast, which was coming in December, and I’d just finished an unusual autobiographical novel by a young woman with schizophrenia called I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

  “What books have you read lately?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Ha! Funny you should ask,” Plain Jane replied. I noticed everyone turned to look at Jackie.

  “What?” Jackie asked. “Oh, I know what you mean. That book, Tropic of Cancer. Are you familiar with it, Dora? A novel, written by Henry Miller and published in France in the ’30s. Apparently, considered too vulgar for Americans.”

  “That’s because it is vulgar!” Mrs. Bailey White almost shouted.

  “Well, let’s just say that some of it is not in good taste,” Plain Jane said. By way of explanation to me, she added, “It was finally published in the U.S. a few years ago and then the courts said it was obscene. I think it’s available again now. Anyway, Jackie got her hands on a copy. Jackie, how did you get it, anyway?”

  Jackie lit a cigarette. “I didn’t buy it
at the Book Nook, that’s for sure.”

  “We read passages of it aloud, and it was shocking!” Mrs. Bailey White howled.

  “Oh, I was just trying to get us out of the rut we were in.”

  “What rut was that?” Plain Jane asked.

  “Reading books that were too safe.”

  “What else did you read?” I asked.

  “Well, just before you came home we’d been discussing Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,” Plain Jane said.

  “Oh, I read that in high school and liked it very much,” I said, thrilled that we were now on safer ground. If only Priscilla, Robbie-Lee, and the librarian, Miss Lansbury, were here, it might feel like old times.

  “I don’t know why we read that,” Jackie grumbled. “I really didn’t care for it that much.”

  “She’s the same author who wrote The Yearling,” Plain Jane replied testily, “and we all loved that.”

  “I liked that it was by a woman author and it’s about Florida,” said Mrs. Bailey White.

  “I remember it as a pioneer story,” I said, “except that instead of out west it was set in north-central Florida. It’s a memoir, right? And she’s very independent and endures all kinds of hardships—”

  “Hardships?! She was out of her mind!” Jackie interrupted. “Poison ivy? Snakes? I could hardly read it. Why put yourself through something like that?”

  “Oh, Jackie, you’re missing the point!” Plain Jane said crossly, having stood and retrieved the book from Mrs. Bailey White’s shelf. “Listen to this passage: ‘It is more important to live the life one wishes to live, and to go down with it if necessary, quite contentedly, than to live more profitably but less happily.’ ”

  “I agree, that is a beautiful sentiment,” Jackie said snippily, “but I have never really understood this type of adventure memoir—you know, where some naïve person goes out into the wilderness and goes through all kinds of hell of their own making and somehow supposedly emerges as a better, fuller human being. Ugh!”

  “Jackie, you have no spirit of adventure!” cried Plain Jane.

  “How can you say that?” Jackie blew a stream of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. “I live here, don’t I? I came all the way from Boston to Collier County, doesn’t that count for something? Why do we always end up talking about me, anyway? Let’s talk about something else.” She turned to me and, without blinking an eye, said, “Dora, speaking of adventure, when are you going to tell us what happened in Mississippi?”