Louise's Dilemma

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘And the name of it is?’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘The name of your farm,’ I said. ‘We just need to know for our notes.’

  ‘I don’t know why. Everyone around here knows us. This is Hilltop Farm.’

  ‘Where is your husband today?’ Williams continued.

  ‘He works at the naval station on Solomons Island,’ she said. ‘Has done since it was built.’

  ‘You can spare the time from the farm?’ I asked, trying to add some friendliness to Williams’ questioning.

  She shrugged. ‘My husband felt like it was his patriotic duty. And the money is real good. We hired a colored man to help with the chores. What is this all about?’

  ‘Last night late a truck drove by your house, stopped at that old tobacco barn on Battle Creek Road,’ Williams said, ‘and loaded up a suspicious looking bundle wrapped in canvas. Leroy Martin drove the truck, but another man was at the barn and helped Leroy load it up. Martin drove down the road to the ferry landing at Island Creek, where it caught his friend Dennis’s ferry before we could reach it. Did you see or hear that truck?’

  ‘No, sir, I did not!’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘We own that barn, but we ain’t used it in years. It’s just for storage. I didn’t hear nothing last night. Why don’t you talk to Dennis?’

  ‘We did. He said someone “borrowed” his ferryboat.’

  ‘I reckon he knows, then.’

  ‘Inside the barn we found evidence of fresh blood, Mrs Cooke. Would you know anything about that?’

  Mrs Cooke’s lips compressed into a thin line. ‘What makes you think you can come in here and ask me such? Like I’m a criminal! I’ll thank you to get out of my house and off my property! And don’t come back unless you know what you are talking about!’

  Her dog, alarmed by her tone of voice, leapt to its feet and growled at us.

  ‘Ma’am, I should warn you that the FBI—’

  I couldn’t stand it another minute. I stood up and reached for my coat. ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Cooke,’ I said.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie—’ Williams began.

  ‘We need to leave, now, as Mrs Cooke has requested,’ I said. ‘Come on!’

  Outside, Williams grabbed my arm.

  ‘Let go of me,’ I said.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said.

  ‘In the car!’

  ‘I’m warning you …’

  ‘Get in the God-damned car!’ I said. ‘The woman is standing on the porch watching us!’

  We both got in the car, Williams slamming his door. ‘Listen—’ he said.

  ‘Start the car!’

  ‘You—!’

  ‘Drive!’

  Williams shifted gears and headed back up the road, but pulled off onto the shoulder when we were out of sight of the farmhouse. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

  ‘What is wrong with you! You’re wearing a suit, tie, and fedora. You stick out like a sore thumb around here. I grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, a place a lot like this. You don’t turn people down when they offer you a cup of coffee in their home. It’s insulting!’

  ‘Director Hoover insists we wear suits and refuse refreshments, you know that.’

  ‘Director Hoover isn’t interviewing rural working people from the western shore of Maryland! You treat people like criminals before you have any evidence!’

  ‘What happened last night wasn’t evidence?’

  ‘You don’t know what those men were doing. Once you started treating them like gangsters we sure weren’t going to find out. And what was that business with the guns on the ferryboat slip? Are you crazy! You could have gotten us both shot!’

  ‘You think you could do better?’

  ‘I would certainly hope so.’

  We drove in silence back toward St Leonard.

  ‘I guess we should get some lunch,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. But not at Bertie Woods’ Café. We’ve made enough of a spectacle of ourselves there.’

  ‘There’s a shack out here called Tommy’s Crab House,’ he said. ‘That suit you, Mrs Pearlie?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But do me a favor. Ditch the hat, topcoat, and tie and wear one of the parkas so that you look like a human being.’

  After lunch we drove back to Mrs Sullivan’s guesthouse.

  ‘Look,’ Williams said. ‘Now that I’ve identified myself as an FBI agent, why don’t you wait here until after I’ve talked to the police officer? Then I’ll drive you up to Frederick and you can catch a bus back to Washington.’

  I’d had enough. I chose my words carefully, knowing I might damage my career if I was too strident.

  ‘You seem to have forgotten,’ I said. ‘I am not your assistant. I’m your colleague, your liaison with the Office of Strategic Services. It was our initial inquiry about a postcard from France mailed to Leroy Martin that brought us here. I am going with you to talk to the constable and everywhere else you intend to pursue this investigation. And if I feel it’s necessary I’ll ask my own questions.’

  Williams just looked at me, not in a malevolent way, but calculating, as if he was deciding how to handle me. I held his gaze without flinching. His eyes broke away first.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I apologize.’

  That was all. He shifted gears, and we continued down the road toward the Post Office, where the Calvert County Constable kept an office.

  The Post Office was located in Bertie Woods’ Store, which was attached to the café where we had already made such an impression on the local folk. I noticed that Williams kept his parka on when we went inside. The Post Office had a separate entry, on the other side of the building from the café. Inside I noticed the building directory listed the library, where Anne worked part-time. I wondered if she was there now.

  Constable Ben Long was the same man Art Collins and I had asked for directions to the Martin home what seemed like an age ago. His faded blue double-breasted police uniform had some wear on it, but the tin star pinned to his chest gleamed. A cane, marked off in inches, topped with a wicked knobbed handle, leaned against the back of his chair. His aged collie lay on a blanket nearby, but raised her head and wagged her tail, her eyes bright and alert.

  Long recognized me, too. Standing up, gripping the edge of his desk for support, he stretched out a hand to shake mine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I don’t remember your name.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Louise Pearlie,’ I said. ‘And this is Special Agent Gray Williams.’

  ‘FBI,’ Williams said. ‘You spoke on the telephone with our agent in Baltimore about Leroy Martin.’

  ‘Of course,’ Long said, shaking Williams hand too, before sitting back down in his desk chair.

  Long’s office was not much more than a closet behind the sorting room of the post office. It barely held Long’s desk and chair, a file cabinet, and another small chair that Williams offered to me. Williams leaned up against the file cabinet. A telephone, typewriter, and banker’s lamp crowded the top of Long’s small desk.

  ‘Mrs Pearlie, are you a colleague of Agent Williams?’ he asked. ‘I thought there were no women in the FBI. It’s about time Hoover joined the twentieth century.’ He grinned at me and winked so I’d know he was teasing.

  ‘I’m from another agency,’ I said. ‘The Office of Price Administration.’

  ‘Sure you are,’ he answered. ‘Do you two mind if I smoke?’

  When we shook our heads he pulled out a crushed pack of Marlboros from his desk drawer and lit it with a Victory match.

  ‘Two smokes a day,’ he said, puffing away. ‘That’s all my doctor lets me have. I punctured a lung in the same shoot-out that messed up my leg.’ He blew the match out and pinched the hot tip before flipping it into a trash can.

  ‘It would have been better for you to have hailed from a different government office, Mrs Pearlie. The folks around here are good Americans, but they don’t take kindly to the government telling them wh
at prices to charge for the fruits of their labor, if you get my drift.’

  ‘So I have discovered!’

  Williams was getting impatient with our bantering, shifting from foot to foot. He didn’t understand that we country people sounded each other out by bouncing small talk off each other. Long might be elderly and lame, but his mind was sharp, and I doubted he was afraid of anyone, as Williams had suggested earlier.

  ‘Were you able to find answers to any of the questions we talked about, Officer?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Some,’ Long said. ‘You asked about Leroy Martin. Yeah, I’ve heard stories that he drives around at odd hours of the night, and I know he’s been buying black market gasoline …’

  ‘Who from?’ Williams asked, instantly alert.

  ‘There ain’t no need for you to know that,’ Long said.

  ‘What are you talking about? He’s breaking the rationing laws!’

  ‘Course he is,’ Long said, shifting in his chair, ‘but so what? If you go and arrest the filling station attendant, who the hell are you going to find to take her place? We got just one filling station in town. All the young men are in the Army, and the older able-bodied men, and a lot of the women, work at the naval station or in the oyster cannery where they can make real money. Believe it or not, last year Calvert County had a policeman who could walk. He’s in the Pacific now.’

  Williams backed down. ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ he said. ‘Just tell me if you’ve ever followed Martin on any of his late night jaunts.’

  ‘Son, we got two law enforcement officers in all of Calvert County. I’m on in the daytime. I go to a different town every day and sit by a telephone. On the weekend I sit by my telephone at home. If someone calls me about a problem I look into it. There’s a state trooper on at night. If someone calls him he looks into it. We ain’t got the gas to drive around the county following people who might be doing a little off-season hunting to put some meat on the table, or maybe visiting a girlfriend.’

  Williams told him about the scene we’d witnessed last night, and how this morning the ferryman—

  ‘That’s Dennis Keeler, he’s a pal of Leroy’s,’ Long said.

  —had threatened us with a shotgun, and how Mrs Cooke, the farmer’s wife, had reacted to Williams when he identified himself as an FBI agent.

  ‘The thing is, Constable,’ Williams said, ‘what Leroy Martin and the other man were loading onto Martin’s truck, it looked an awful lot like a corpse. And the tobacco barn floor was soaked with blood, lots of it. What I want to know is, has anyone around here disappeared?’

  Officer Long dropped his rural policeman’s pose. His dog sensed the change in him and sat up, fixing her gaze on him intently. Long looked at me for confirmation.

  ‘It sure could have been a corpse,’ I said. ‘It was heavy enough, and it hung between them like a body. But it was dark, and whatever it was was wrapped in sailcloth, so we can’t be sure.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this at all,’ he said. ‘Someone is missing from this town, but no one has reported it to me officially. Gladys Cooke’s husband, Frank. I’ve haven’t seen him around for a while. Neither has anyone else. The girl at the café asked me had I seen him, because he used to come in for lunch with the crowd from the cannery. Then the girl at the filling station asked about him. And he wasn’t at church last Sunday neither. I got concerned enough I went to ask Gladys about it.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Gladys told me he was working at the naval station on Solomons Island now, and the hours were so long, he was renting a room from someone near the base.’

  ‘Did you check her story out?’

  ‘There weren’t no way to check it out,’ Long said. ‘She didn’t know the name of the guy who rented Frank his room. Plus if a wife says her husband ain’t missing, I got no business looking for him.’

  The whole time Long and Williams were exchanging cop talk I was wondering if all this – Leroy driving around the country at night, bloody goings on at the old tobacco barn at Hilltop Farm, and Dennis Keeler’s refusal to cooperate with us, at the point of a shotgun – had anything to do with my job, investigating the peculiar postcard sent from Richard Martin in France to Leroy Martin. Was it a coincidence that while investigating the postcard OSS and the FBI had fallen over some local criminal activity? I couldn’t see any relationship between the two issues, no matter how I stretched my imagination. But even if Williams was no longer interested in the postcard from France, I was.

  Long rose from his chair, gripping his cane as he moved from around his desk. ‘Let’s drive out to Gladys’s place and talk to her again,’ he said. ‘Maybe if we all show up there it will loosen her tongue. She must know something about what went on at that tobacco barn last night.’

  ‘I’ve got to put this vial of blood on the bus to D.C.,’ Williams said. ‘Before we go out to the farm if I can.’

  Long checked his watch. ‘The express bus heading north pulls into the filling station in ten minutes. We can make it.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘You two go on up to the filling station. I’m going to see if Anne is in the library.’ If I could talk to Anne without Williams I might be able to get her to open up to me.

  Anne was checking in a stack of returned books, flipping to the back jacket of each one and stamping the index card in the little envelope in the back of the book ‘returned’.

  The library was tiny, but every nook and cranny was stuffed with books. Stacks of books stood in corners, with their spines neatly facing out. Books were crammed sideways on the bookshelves on top of the books already shelved there. I could see that each one had its Dewey Decimal System label on the spine. That was unusual for a small town library.

  Anne glanced up when she heard me open the door and paused in her rhythmic stamping. I didn’t see any nervousness at all in her face when she recognized me.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘So, where’s your driver? Or should I say that FBI agent?’

  News got around fast. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t my idea. He’s full of himself, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he is!’ she said, and smiled at me.

  ‘Did you know he was a cop when we came by your house?’

  ‘I was pretty sure,’ she said. ‘And when Dennis Keeler came to breakfast at the café he announced it to the world. Where is he?’

  ‘Off with Constable Long,’ I said. ‘He’s got to put a package on the bus to Washington.’

  I pulled up a stool to help her, opening each book to the back jacket so she could stamp the index card.

  ‘You’ve got a nice collection here,’ I said. ‘Especially for such a small town.’

  ‘The summer people leave them behind,’ she said.

  ‘Are you a trained librarian?’ I asked, thinking of the neat labels on every spine.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘We had a real librarian, but she moved to Baltimore to take care of her grandchildren when her daughter got a job. I took a course at the Washington Public Library so I could fill in. I love books. I wanted to keep the library open, even for just a few afternoons a week.’

  ‘You’ve always loved to read?’

  ‘Always. Of course, when my grandmother and I arrived in the states, I had to learn to read and speak English.’

  ‘You hardly have an accent.’

  ‘Thanks. My grandmother never did pick it up.’

  ‘It must have been so traumatic, losing your family and moving to a new country.’

  Anne paused. ‘It was awful,’ she said. ‘A nightmare. The worse one you could imagine. My father and older brother died fighting. My mother and little brother died from typhoid fever.’

  ‘War is so terrible.’

  ‘But America is a magical place. Safe and free. Everyone was kind to us when we arrived here. When my grandmother died, the woman who owned the boarding house where we lived, her cousin was Bertie W
oods’ grandfather. He got me a job at the café. I met Leroy there. Marrying him made me an American.’

  We’d finished stamping the stack of books. Anne began organizing them on a trolley so she could return them to their shelves in order.

  ‘I know Leroy seems rough, but he is very kind to me,’ she said. ‘He didn’t care that I didn’t want children. Or that I won’t go to church. I haven’t believed in God since my family died, but don’t spread that around. Leroy only cares if I’m happy.’ She looked up from her work and smiled at me. ‘And Leroy’s happy as long as I cook him a good dinner. So that’s what I do, every single night!’

  I found Long and Williams drinking coffee in the café.

  ‘So what did you find out?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I just made friends with her. For now.’

  Williams shook his head. ‘Women,’ he said.

  I ignored him. ‘Did you get the package on the bus? What’s next?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I did. We’re going out to Gladys and Frank’s farm. The constable here has a plan, but he won’t tell me what it is.’

  We left the warm café and ventured outside. The weather was no longer glacial, but still very cold. I pulled the parka hood over my head and drew on my gloves.

  ‘Let’s take my police vehicle,’ Long said. ‘Then Gladys won’t know you’re with me right away,’ he said to Williams.

  The policeman’s car was a Chevy, black with a white roof and hood, a stubby red light on top, and chains on all the tires.

  Long held the back door open for me.

  When we arrived at the farm, Gladys was standing on the porch wrapped in a quilt and smoking a cigarette, held primly between her thumb and forefinger, as if she didn’t do it very often. I guessed no one smoked in her house.

  ‘Hello, Constable,’ she said as we got out of the police car. ‘What can I do for you? You,’ she said, staring at Williams and me, ‘I got nothing to say to you.’

  ‘I don’t like to interfere in someone’s private business,’ Long said, ‘but this has gone on long enough. Agent Williams, will you go on around to the back door and keep watch?’