The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Poor Will,” he said, shaking his head. “He never had any luck with women.”

  We followed him south, and then west out of town. It was pretty country, gentle hills broken by streams and the clean smell of pines in the air. Neither of us spoke, each dreading the ordeal of having to break the news to her father.

  Five miles out of town we came to a gate and the police car turned in. We followed, stopping before a frame house with a pickup truck under the carport. In a field to the left, cattle grazed, and there was a barn in the rear, with a tractor visible in an attached shed.

  The chief got out and we followed. He started for the house, then stopped and squinted. There was movement in the back pasture and he nodded, pointing.

  “He’s back there, splitting wood.” He waved his arm and a second later grunted in satisfaction. “He sees us. He’ll be here in a while, if he’s a mind to.”

  “He lives here alone?” Sal asked.

  The chief nodded again. “Yep. For the last twenty-something years. Raises stock, splits wood, bales hay. I don’t think I ever seen the man rest.” He shrugged. “Hell, he’ll probably outlive us all.”

  I could see him now, a lean, grim-looking figure with a slight limp, coming toward us in his own time, as if to let us know that on his land he would not be hurried by outsiders.

  When he was fifty feet away the chief raised a hand in greeting.

  “Hello, Will. Sorry to bother you, but there’s some men here from New Orleans wanted to talk to you.”

  Will Folsom appraised us both with narrow eyes and nodded.

  “I was about finished anyway.” His eyes went from Sal to me and back again. “Police, ain’t they?”

  We nodded.

  Folsom spat on the ground. “So what is it now? What do you want from me?”

  Sal cleared his throat. “It’s about your daughter, Mary Juliette, Mr. Folsom. I’m sorry, but we’ve got some bad news.”

  “Mary Juliette,” Folsom repeated. “That’s all she ever was: bad news. I’ve had all the bad news I want. I got no daughter now, so there’s nothing you can tell me would matter.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mancuso shifted his weight to the other side. If he had thought the chief was coming to his aid, he was disappointed. The local lawman evidently had dealt with the older man before.

  “The fact is,” Sal started again, “Mary Juliette is dead.”

  But Will Folsom was already wiping his face with a blue bandana. When he finished he folded it carefully and put it into the pocket of his overalls.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “Well,” Sal began, “I …”

  Folsom shook his head impatiently.

  “Look, Mister, fact is she made it clear she didn’t want no part of me or this place. She was in junior high school when she started giving me pain. First the boys, always coming around, so I never could get no work out of her, and then she started running away. Well, I wasn’t surprised. It was same as her mother done before her. Like daughter, like mother. Scarlet as the whore of Babylon. Nothing on this place that satisfied. There always had to be more. The big city, excitement, that was what she wanted. Wasn’t nothing I could give her was good enough.”

  For a moment I wondered if he was speaking of mother or daughter and then I realized it didn’t matter; he was talking about both.

  “Many’s the time I had calls in the middle of the night from some stranger, asking for her. Or from the law, saying she was in some scrape. After a while I got tired of it. I got a place to run. I got my pride. I’m a God-fearing man, and Chief Ainsley there’ll tell you I never cheated a man in my life or broke the law.”

  The chief nodded agreement.

  “I got tired of being a doormat, a place to come back to when there wasn’t no place else to go. I got tired, you understand?”

  It was Sal’s turn to nod. The old farmer half turned, then gave us a sideways look.

  “So how did she die?” he asked softly.

  Sal looked him in the eyes. “In a plane crash. The one across the lake, the other day.”

  For the first time Will Folsom seemed genuinely surprised.

  “You mean it was an accident?”

  “Well, we aren’t sure,” Sal equivocated.

  “But a plane crash,” Folsom insisted. “I mean, it had to be accidental, right? The things fall down sometimes.”

  “Yes, sir. But in this case, there may have been a bomb.”

  “A bomb?” His jaws worked silently for a moment. “Well, she couldn’t of had nothing to do with that.”

  “No, sir, we don’t think she placed the bomb. After all, she was killed.”

  “Right.” The whole idea seemed novel to him. “Where was she going to?”

  “She was coming back from Jamaica,” Sal explained.

  “Jamaica. God. I guess she was on vacation, with one of those men she was always with, the ones she got to buy her presents. Was he killed, too?”

  “We think she was traveling alone.”

  His look told us he didn’t believe it.

  He rubbed a veined hand over his forehead. “Well, am I supposed to go pick up her body? Is that what the law says?”

  Mancuso coughed self-consciously.

  “She hasn’t been identified,” I said.

  The old man nodded. “Well, when she is, call me up. I’ll do what has to be done.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Will,” the chief soothed.

  Mancuso had the photo of her in his hand now and he was holding it up. “Just for the record, sir, this is your daughter.”

  “That’s her. Who’s the other girl?”

  “A friend,” Mancuso said.

  “Yeah. I guess I know what kind of friend. Probably let Julie lead her around by the nose like she did all of ’em.”

  “Is that how she was?” I asked.

  “Since the day she was born. Just like her mother. Thought she knew better than anybody. Regular little know-it-all. Always better than any of the other kids. If one of ’em read a Bible verse, she had to try and quote some writer. Some of the books she brought into this house I was ashamed to have people know were here. I took a whole bunch and threw ‘em out.” He shrugged. “But there’s a few of ’em still here,” he acknowledged, his voice weary now. “I guess I just got tired of trying to keep ahead of her.”

  The self-possessed woman on the beach shifted in my mind and I was seeing a teenage girl, restless, defiant, questioning.

  “Do you mind if we look at them?” I asked suddenly.

  “What? The books?”

  “Whatever you have of hers.”

  Folsom spat again and his jaw twitched and at first I thought I had said the wrong thing, but then he turned around and started for the house.

  “No harm in that, I guess.”

  We followed him in through the screen door. The living room smelled of pine oil, like the boards had just been scrubbed. There was a small table with a big black Bible, and on the wall the head of a handsome buck. A large television sat in one corner, across from a vinyl sofa, but other than that the room was Spartan in its furnishings. Folsom vanished into the hallway and reappeared a few minutes later with a large cardboard box.

  “Keep it in the closet,” he explained, setting it on the sofa. “Got no cause to look at it. Probably ought to throw it away.” He stood back, allowing us to examine the contents.

  If I expected a surprise, I was disappointed. There was a paperback dictionary, a copy of Mexico on $5 a Day, an outdated catalog from the University of New Orleans, a couple of cheap mysteries, and, oddly, a paperback of T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

  “Trash,” Folsom commented, but I wasn’t sure whether he was singling out Lawrence or the entire collection. I fished around in the contents and this time I came up with an inspirational volume by Og Mandino. The pages were thumbed and notes had been scrawled in the margins. I laid the book beside the others, on the couch, and looked down at what was left. All I saw
was a comb, a makeup kit, and a small spiral notebook. I opened the latter and skimmed through it. It was a journal, and from the dates it seemed to have been written in a couple of months during 1974. It quit abruptly after twenty pages of entries and the rest were blank. On closer inspection I saw that some of the pages between entries had been ripped out, leaving whole days missing.

  “That’s all there is,” Folsom pronounced. “I cleaned out the room. When she disobeyed me, I cast her out, just like the Book tells you.”

  We started for the door, the old man following.

  “She didn’t start out that way, you know. She was a good student in school. Learned the whole Gettysburg Address. She was the princess in the fourth-grade play. But somewhere she just went wrong.” He let the door slam behind him. “Somewhere they both went wrong, just like their mother.”

  Mancuso and I stopped together. “Both?” I asked.

  “Her and her sister, Jennifer Ann. The one that’s in the asylum right now.”

  11

  To Julie with love, Christmas 1984. From Jenny. Of course. Omar Khayyam.

  Mancuso started to say something but I put my hand on his arm.

  “Would you mind telling us what happened?” I asked quietly.

  Folsom snorted. “Ain’t nothing to tell. Jennifer Ann was just like her sister. Only Mary Juliette was five years older. Taught all her willfulness and disobedience to Jennifer. In the end, Jennifer Ann was just like her. Ran away, left me alone here, after all I done.” He kicked at the ground. “Had some hopes for Jennifer Ann. She didn’t have all the high and mighty notions like Mary Juliette. I thought there was more of me in her. But like it says in the Book, the evil drives out the good. She had a temper, just like Mary Juliette; you couldn’t tell her what to do. So one day she up and went to the city, God knows what she got involved with, whether it was drugs or liquor or what kind of men. I don’t even want to know. All I know is one day I get a call from Mary Juliette, telling me Jennifer Ann’s in a mental hospital, wants me to help get her out.”

  The chief sighed and folded his arms. “Will, you never told me that. My God, man, if you’d of let me know …”

  “Don’t need no help,” Folsom declared. “Besides, like I told Mary Juliette, hospital was the best place for her. Maybe get some of the wildness out of her.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that was the last I heard.”

  “When was this?” Mancuso asked.

  “I dunno. Month ago, I guess. Tell the truth, I tried to wipe it out of my mind.”

  “Do you remember the name of the hospital?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I think it was something-by-the-river, or something like that.”

  “Riverside,” I suggested.

  “Yeah. Probably. You know it?”

  Mancuso said, “It’s a very nice place. She’ll get good treatment.”

  “I guess. Least she won’t be on the streets.”

  An awkward silence descended and the chief checked us from the corner of his eye. When he was satisfied, he turned back to the farmer.

  “Well, then I reckon we’ll be on our way, Will. I’m sorry to have to bring you this kinda news. But at least Jennifer’s still alive.”

  We were getting into the car when the old man’s voice caught us. He hobbled forward, his face red.

  “Are you gonna see her?”

  “We’ll try,” I said.

  Folsom considered and then, with a show of effort, got out the words,“When you do, will somebody let me know? She’s all I got.”

  We were back on the highway, headed south for the city, when Mancuso spoke. “All right, so what’s with the sister? You know something I don’t.”

  I explained then about the medicine bottle. “Obviously, Mary Juliette, or Julia, as she called herself, went to Laurent on some pretext, to try to find out about her sister, and he gave her this prescription.”

  “Why not the other way around?” Mancuso asked. “Couldn’t she have been going to Laurent and then have referred her sister to him?”

  “Possible, but then why would she call her father to try to get Jennifer loose?”

  “Good point. Well, I may be able to use a contact in Jefferson Parish to find out what’s going on. Or we could try for a court order, if we can show it’s connected to a crime. It is connected, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, but I plan to find out.” I was thinking about the woman who wanted me to get her little boy back from her ex-husband and wondering how Sandy was coming. It hadn’t sounded like a difficult case. “Don’t start anything yet,” I said. “Let me try something. If it works, we may find out a lot more about Julia Morvant, or Mary Juliette Folsom.”

  Katherine was at home, having just come in from the University, and we had a light lunch. I was glad to be able to sit down away from the office, because I knew Cox would be sending Solly after me to find out my decision and I needed more time to make it.

  “So you think the father ran his daughters off,” Katherine said, chewing thoughtfully.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time it happened,” I said, “or the last. I looked in Julia’s notebook and what I saw was a lot of unhappiness. I didn’t have much time to read it, of course, because Folsom was standing there, but there were some sentences about how much she hurt and one about how she didn’t want him to come again. Lots of pages were missing and I think he may have torn them out and just missed that sentence.”

  “What are you getting at?” Katherine asked in a low voice.

  “I think he abused them,” I said. “If not sexually, at least physically. He’s a proud, intolerant man, unable to bend. His wife couldn’t take it and neither could the two girls.”

  “Why would he keep all that stuff, then?”

  I shrugged. “Like most people, he’s ambivalent about the people he’s emotionally attached to. I think it’s his way of holding onto her.” I took another sip of beer. “God, it must have been hell growing up there. To be young and energetic and sensitive, and to know there’s a whole big world out there. …”

  She gave me a fishy stare. “Micah, you aren’t hung up on this woman, are you?”

  My laughter was forced. “Which woman? Julia or Mary Juliette? Anyway, she’s dead. How could I be? I guess I’m just obsessed with the fact that she called me. I keep hearing her on the tape, asking me to come get her. Maybe I feel guilty in an odd sort of way.”

  “Well, so long as she stays dead,” Katherine said with a smile.

  “I don’t think there’s any problem about that.” A picture of debris floating in the swamp came to mind and I tried to force it away.

  “And then there’s the comment she made about Marc Antony,” I said. “I keep asking myself what it means. She was going to make him look like a piker. A piker, for God’s sake. Now what in the hell does that refer to?”

  It was Katherine’s turn to shrug. “Well, what did he do? ‘I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,’” she quoted.

  “And Antony stirred up the crowd against Brutus and the conspirators,” I said. “The conspirators trusted Antony and he pulled the rug out from under them.”

  “Do you think she was going to drop a dime on the cartel?”

  “That could get somebody killed, all right,” I agreed.

  “But why blow up a plane when they could have killed her as easily on the street?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe it was an example to others. And our boy Rivas seems to like things that explode.”

  “Well, if he killed Linda Marconi, he was willing to change his method,” Katherine pointed out. “But I agree. That quotation seems to imply she was going to pull some kind of deception.”

  She raised her wine glass. “That is, unless that wasn’t what she meant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the rest of the quotation? ‘The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones,’ right? Maybe she was thinking of that part of the speech.”

 
; “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But how could it apply?”

  “Beats me. But I like the ‘interred’ part. It sounds like somebody was going to get buried.”

  “True,” I said. “But since it turned out to be her, I don’t see how it would work. I somehow don’t see herself as the kind who blows herself up to make a point.”

  “So what’s the next step?” she asked. “And please don’t say you’re going to use yourself to bait this Rivas. I don’t think I could stand that.”

  “Well, not yet,” I said. “Right now I have another idea. But I need Sandy to carry it out.”

  It was five-thirty when I got Sandy at home.

  “Damn, Micah, I been calling you for two hours,” she complained. “Are you off on vacation?”

  “I’m at Katherine’s,” I said and heard her knowing chuckle.

  “That’s my man,” she said. “So she came back after all.”

  “Yeah, bad luck for you,” I joked.

  “Life is a vale of tears. Now, you wanna hear how I wrapped up this exceedingly complex case or not?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Well, first I drive up to McComb and go down to the co’lud quarters. I find somebody knows somebody works for the gentleman in question, so I visit her, and she says it ain’t a bad family, they treat her okay, but there ain’t no kid in it. Mister came back from New Orleans by himself, moved in with his momma. In fact, she happens to know the mister is pretty broke up about losing his kid and she’s heard him talking to a certain local lawyer about what to do to get him back. And she’s heard Momma say she never liked that woman anyway, and there ain’t much she woulda put past her.”

  “So naturally you went to the house and checked it out yourself,” I said.

  “Naturally. Except in McComb, black gal don’t exactly bop up to the front door and ask to see the man of the house. All I could do was a rolling survey—you know, check for toys on the front lawn, make a few passes and see if the kid was outside.”