The plantation house appeared. In its day, from the way Kay had described it to me, her paternal grandmother’s mansion must have been breathtaking, a sprawling antebellum manor finished in alabaster white and forest-green trim with a covered porch that wrapped around the entire house and a well-tended flower garden on the front lawn.
Now, however, the neglect showed everywhere. The alabaster finish was speckled and splashed with mold and peeling away in big strips. Parts of the porch roof had caved in. Kudzu choked the front columns and the entire porch railing. Tentacles and shrouds of the creeping vine had already reached the upper floors, where birds were flashing in and out of dark windows with broken, jagged glass.
“This is where Kay Willingham, queen of the DC socialites, is buried?” I said.
CHAPTER 57
WE DROVE TOWARD THE DECREPIT plantation house and saw that a road had been cleared and maintained beyond it. Mahoney continued down the road through more overgrown fields and pine thickets. We were well out of sight of the mansion when I spotted headstones up on a knoll ahead.
“Stop there,” I said.
Mahoney pulled over by a stone path leading up to the knoll. I got out, felt a breeze for the first time all day, and began to climb, Mahoney right behind me.
I don’t know what I expected, but with each step higher, I was surprised to see more and more headstones on the knoll and more and more of the remarkable scenery spread out below and beyond the Sutter family cemetery. There had to be at least three hundred and fifty headstones there. Below them, at the bottom of a gentle slope, a mature oak forest grew on a flat that ran out to several arms jutting into a large lake. The sun was behind us, throwing golden light on the timbered points and the water.
“Beautiful spot,” Mahoney said.
“Spectacular,” I said. “No wonder Kay wanted to be buried here.”
I tore my attention from the lake and looked around at the headstones nearby. I found the graves of Kay’s parents, Beth and Roy Sutter, her paternal grandparents, and various other Sutter relatives.
But there was no immediate sign of Kay’s grave. Finally I looked way to the back of the family cemetery and spotted freshly disturbed earth.
I walked in that direction, scanning the older headstones as I passed, seeing earlier generations of the Sutter family and their kin, people who’d died in the late 1800s.
Eight rows from the back of the cemetery, something changed. Every other headstone I’d looked at so far had the person’s name, his or her relationship to a Sutter if the individual had married into the clan, and the birth and death dates.
But then I saw a worn headstone that said simply DAPHNE, 1799–1857.
Beside Daphne was BIG GEORGE, 1802–1861. There were more one-named headstones in that row and all the others behind it. LADY BIRD, 1772–1821. LUCAS, 1706–1794. MIRIAM, 1698–1766.
“What’s with the single names?” Mahoney said behind me.
I looked around and felt a turbulence of emotions. “They’re the plantation’s slaves. Almost two hundred years of them.”
As I said, my emotions were all over the place, but they swiftly moved toward reverence as I walked through the last of the headstones to the mound of overturned earth and the polished-granite headstone behind the slaves’ graveyard.
KAY SUTTER WILLINGHAM
1968–2020
I’LL SLEEP HERE, THANK YOU. THEY’RE MORE MY KIND.
CHAPTER 58
CLIMBING BACK DOWN TO THE vehicle, Mahoney and I veered between smiling at the first part of the inscription — I’ll sleep here, thank you — and trying to understand what she meant by They’re more my kind.
“Slaves?” Mahoney said as we got in the car.
“Certainly one interpretation.”
“Any others come to mind?”
“African-Americans? The road keeps going, doesn’t it? Let’s go to the end and turn around.”
“I’ve got nowhere to be. Except in a shower and then a rib joint. There has to be a stellar rib joint in Montgomery.”
“Humor me,” I said. “The road ahead looks newer than the one behind us.”
“Fine,” he said. “But if I get this thing stuck, you’re hiking back to the highway.”
“Deal. It looks freshly graded to me.”
Mahoney put the car in gear and drove past the cemetery down into the oak forest. The road was smooth and newly graveled. I looked out through big mature trees, catching sight of what looked like the mossy ruins of stacked stone foundations scattered here and there through the forest. More than a few of the oaks had been girdled with fluorescent surveyors’ tape.
“Someone’s been marking trees for cutting,” I said.
“Look at them all ahead of us!”
Indeed, for two hundred yards and as far as we could see to our left and right, the majority of the trees were marked with fluorescent tape. This part of the old-growth forest was about to be leveled.
“I can’t see a state park authority doing this,” I said.
“Unless Kay decided to take timber off it before giving it to the state.”
Beyond the grove of trees marked for the sawmill, the road ended in a turnaround by the rocky shores of a large, empty, and pristine cove cradled in those big timbered arms of land jutting out into the larger lake. We got out of the car to get a better look.
“I never knew places like this existed in Alabama,” I said. “And the water makes me want to take off my clothes and dive in.”
“You see anyone around to stop you?”
“That’s true. And I think Kay would actually approve.”
“I’m sure she skinny-dipped here a time or two in her life,” Mahoney said, kicking off his shoes and unbuckling his trousers.
A few moments later we waded out and shallow-dived into water that was a good ten degrees cooler than the air. I felt the entire day of travel and work and sweat wash away and surfaced in about twelve feet of clear water feeling thoroughly refreshed.
“That was great,” Mahoney said when he came to the surface. “I think there are springs in this lake. I felt a cold spot back there.”
“And there’s no one here,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t heard a boat, have you?”
“Not one,” he said, rolling onto his back to take in the entire cove. “I could live in a place like this. I could live in a place like this forever.”
“I think a lot of people could,” I said, treading water. “The road. The logging. I think this place is being developed, and not as a park.”
“Could be,” Ned said. “But we can’t look at any of it until we get the order.”
Before I could reply, I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye and twisted to look along the far side of the cove. A lean, muscular African-American man in faded green military gear was crouched at the edge of the forest where it met the rocky shore. He held a scoped hunting rifle that was aimed in our direction.
“Duck!” I yelled a split second before the gun went off.
CHAPTER 59
I HEARD THE BULLET CRACK by me as I dived. I swam deep and went as far as I could toward shore before surfacing for one quick breath. When I dived again, I could see rocks in the shallows ahead of me. I needed to get to my clothes and my gun.
When I surfaced the second time and scanned the shore, the shooter was gone. I swam behind a rock and made sure I could not see him before quickstepping from the water to my clothes.
Mahoney was right behind me, sputtering. “Who took that shot?”
“African-American with a hunting rifle,” I said, snatching up my pile of clothes and pushing my bare feet into my shoes. I trotted back toward the car and out of sight of the north side of the cove.
“Dress,” Mahoney said. “I’ll cover you.” He had his back to me and held his service weapon two-handed as he swept it back and forth across the cove.
I threw my pants on, got my gun out, and told Ned to dress while I covered him. We threw everything else in the
vehicle and got out of there as the sun began to set and the golden light turned to shadows.
“Who the hell was he?” Mahoney said.
“Got me,” I said. “He was there. He shot. He was gone.”
“If he’s security, he just shot at two federal officers in the course of an investigation.”
“Buck-naked in the water where we weren’t supposed to be.”
Ned glanced at me. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of my reputation and good standing with the Bureau.”
Ned considered that, then said, “I see your point.”
It was a fifteen-minute drive back to the gate. But it wasn’t until we were almost there that I got enough bars of cell service to download a satellite view of where we’d just been.
“That was Lake Martin we were swimming in,” I said. “If I’m right, this property is one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land on the lake. It could be worth a fortune.”
“Maybe we had it all wrong,” Mahoney said, putting the car in park at the gate and turning on his headlights so I could see.
I nodded, climbed out to open the gate, and said, “Maybe Kay wasn’t killed for political reasons. Maybe she was killed for something much more mundane, like a huge pile of cash.”
Darkness had fallen by the time Mahoney drove through the gate and I rewrapped the chain and hung the lock the way we’d found it. The road was worse going back than coming in.
We were bouncing around and trying to avoid potholes and ruts when a brilliant light flared behind us, filling the car, showing the road ahead like it was broad daylight. I turned and saw a fast-approaching truck with its headlamps on high beam and a big, powerful spotlight array on the roof that threw blinding light. I caught a glimpse of a heavy-duty bumper and grille guard that looked like it belonged on an army tank.
“He’s going to ram us!” I yelled.
The truck engine roared. The bumper smashed into our rear, throwing us sideways onto a slick patch. Mahoney clawed at the wheel, squinting at the glare, and almost righted us before the truck hit us again.
We went sideways to the left. Our rear quarter panel hit an embankment, and we were thrown back across the road and right in front of the truck with the lights and that bumper. I thought for sure we were going to be rammed broadside and flipped end over end into the trees.
But the truck hit a huge cross-road rut where a culvert had washed out, which bounced the rig to the right, and the left corner of the bumper just missed us as we spun out and off the road. I expected a massive crash and tried to brace myself, but we just sort of bumped and slithered to a stop in a pasture.
The truck did not slow and did not shut down the lights as it went on toward the highway. We both sat there a few minutes, rattled and gasping at the adrenaline coursing through our bloodstreams.
Mahoney finally put his hands back on the steering wheel and touched the gas. The front end pulled hard right, but he was able to get the rental out of the field and onto the road. We had to pry the front fender off one of the wheels, but, traveling at about forty-five miles an hour, we managed to get all the way back to Montgomery without the car shaking apart.
When we pulled up in front of our hotel, I said, “We’ve been given the runaround, shot at, and forced off the road, and we’ve been here less than twelve hours. I’d say that was a pretty strong first day.”
“And you know what’s even better?” Ned asked as he parked the rental, the front tires rubbing and squealing.
“We get to take a shower?”
“Nah,” he said, gesturing across the street at a garish red neon sign. “Rib joint.”
CHAPTER 60
AFTER A SHOWER, AN OUTSTANDING baby-back-rib dinner, and a fitful night of sleep, Mahoney and I were at the door of the state court clerk in Montgomery ten minutes before the office opened, drinking coffee.
“No word on the federal order?” I asked as he checked his phone.
“It’s all been filed,” Ned said. “Just has to get under Judge Adams’s nose.”
I wondered what we’d find in Kay’s medical files, what other dark secrets the socialite might have been hiding. She’d led multiple lives, I decided. That was certain. And within each life, she wore many, many masks.
“I made the right call not reporting that we were shot at and almost run down by a truck,” Mahoney said.
I nodded. “At least until we know the lay of the land and who’s on our side.”
A worker opened the doors at precisely 8:30 a.m. We went to Leroy Wolf, the clerk himself, presented our credentials, and asked to see the probate files on Kay Sutter Willingham.
He peered at us through reading glasses for a moment and then typed on his keyboard and hit Enter. “Sealed twelve days ago,” he said, turning the screen in our direction.
I leaned forward. “Is there a time stamp on that? What exact time was it sealed?”
Wolf frowned and typed again. “Four thirty p.m.”
“Eight and a half hours after I was on the scene in the schoolyard,” I said to Ned.
“At whose request was probate sealed?” he asked.
Wolf studied his screen and then smiled. “The late Justice Richard Fortier of the Alabama Supreme Court.”
“A state supreme court justice sealed it and then died?” Mahoney said.
“No, Justice Fortier was elevated to the high court early last year,” Wolf said. “He wrote this order six years ago to go into effect upon notice of Kay Willingham’s death. He had a heart attack March of last year, not six weeks into his term on the bench. But his seal stands.”
I thought we were at an impasse until Mahoney said, “That seal includes the latest documents, right? As in the most recent last will and testament?”
“That’s correct.”
“But not old wills. They’re considered null and void and therefore not sealed.”
“That’s true,” Wolf said. “But as a policy, we discard and expunge legal documents that are no longer in effect.”
“But as a practice, people are lazy,” Mahoney said. “Especially state employees.”
Wolf slowly turned his head to look at him. “I’m trying to be nice and helpful here.”
“And I appreciate it, and I would be even more appreciative if you’d look for earlier filings of Kay Willingham’s last will and testament. And any other file with her name on it.”
Wolf sighed, typed, looked at the screen, and said, “Well, lazy or not, there are too many filings here to be easily printed out.”
“Give us an index,” I said. “We’ll be selective.”
Within thirty seconds we were looking at a three-page list of documents filed in Alabama’s state court with Kay’s name on them. The first and latest was her sealed probate file. Others had to do with the death and burial of her mother.
The eighth on the list was a revised will filed twenty months ago, which we asked Wolf to print. As those pages piled up, we continued down the index list and found a land title transfer of eighty acres from Kay Willingham to Althea Lincoln. It was dated five years ago.
“Althea,” I said, remembering the framed photograph in Kay’s house of the two young girls embracing after a swim. “That was her childhood friend.”
“Check this, Alex,” Mahoney said, looking up from the pages of the old will. “Kay’s got elaborate plans for her funeral here. Bible readings. Music. A letter to be read. Reference to an obituary already being written.”
“That goes against what Vice President Willingham told us about not wanting a ceremony or memorial.”
“Unless she changed her plans for her funeral along with her plans for the plantation,” Mahoney said, reading on. “Okay, here’s the language regarding the land in the twenty-month-old will: ‘Upon my death, the lands of Sutter plantation will be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds distributed to charities listed in appendix A.’ ”
“But again, that will is null and void,” Wolf said.
“Here’s a
nother from five years ago,” Mahoney said, looking at the index.
To the clerk’s annoyance, it too had not been expunged, and he printed it.
Ned went straight to the disposition of the land and found, as I’d remembered, that it was to be given to the state as a park and the grounds restored so people would understand the entire story of the Sutter plantation.
The clerk said, “And the three wills prior to that one have indeed been expunged.”
“Do you have appendix A from the twenty-month-old will?” I asked Mahoney. “The list of charities that were supposed to get the money?”
Ned flipped ahead through the document and nodded. He pulled it out and showed it to me. I scanned the list and saw a variety of nonprofits that would have benefited from the property, including Georgetown University and groups fighting for crime victims’ rights, women’s issues, and civil rights. It was not until the bottom that I saw the catch, a big one.
Tapping the page, I read, “‘Monies shall be distributed and disbursed after the deduction of all costs associated with the legal appeals of Napoleon Howard.’ ”
“Who’s Napoleon Howard?” Mahoney asked.
I was about to say I had no idea, but then I remembered something. “I can’t be sure, but I think he might be the guy on death row Kay wanted me to investigate years ago. The one who might have been wrongly convicted.”
“Okay?”
“Vice President Willingham was the prosecutor on that case.”
CHAPTER 61
WE WALKED FROM THE COURTHOUSE over to the law firm of Carson and Knight. The humidity had abated by a percentage point or two, but even at nine a.m., the heat was headed toward blistering. We climbed the front steps and went into the chill air.
“Hello, Reggie,” I said.
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