Paper son, p.11
Paper Son, page 11
“First off,” Pete said, “I got some little thank-yous here for you gents keeping an eye on the store. Not much, but there’s not much left hasn’t been trampled underfoot. I guess you heard about that?” He spread his bounty on the bar. “Good, because what happened in there, that’s why we’re here. Seems it wasn’t just some no-accounts or meth heads. It had to do with Leland and all, and maybe if we can figure it out, I can get Jefferson out of jail.”
“From what I hear, he got himself out already,” said Pelton. “And Pete, I don’t know who you got there but—”
“I’m getting to that, Pelton. And I was speaking in the long-term, because the boy’s no criminal genius and you know Montel’s gonna recapture his ass any minute now. This here’s my cousin Lydia, from up in New York, and her partner, Bill.”
“He look like po-lice,” growled someone from the back of the room.
“Not police, never was,” said Bill, all traces of Southern accent gone. He spoke without defensiveness, just correcting a mistaken impression. He seemed relaxed, unaware of the waves of hostility breaking around him, although I was sure he felt them as strongly as I did. “Ex-navy. Private investigator now. Lydia, too. Pete asked us to come down, see if we could help.”
“See,” said Pete quickly, before anyone else could speak, “Jefferson didn’t kill Leland, y’all know that.” A few murmurs of assent, shrugs, nods. “I’m just a damn card player, don’t know a blessed thing about investigating, except for it’s not something you can leave to the likes of Bert Lucknell.” More murmurs and a snort. “But these folks, investigating’s their business. Now, what happened in the store, someone tearing up the place, that was last night. Didn’t even strike me that some of y’all might’ve been here, until Bill brought it up. So we were thinking, maybe y’all noticed something, like tonight?”
“How come y’all think it have to do with Leland’s killing?” I recognized Duverne, the shadow from the doorway. He walked to the bar and ripped open a bag of chips. “That it ain’t just some punk-ass kids? Plenty of them to go around.”
“Amen to that. Lydia, you want to explain?”
I stepped forward. “Sorry to be interrupting your night, gentlemen, but we could use your help. The way we see it, the store was too much of a wreck for anyone just looking for money or something to sell. We think someone was searching for something, and part of that mess was the search and the rest was to cover it up. We think they came back tonight because they didn’t find whatever it was, so they tried again.”
“Well,” said Duverne, “but even if that right, it don’t necessarily follow it have to do with Leland being killed.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But it’s a strange thing, isn’t it, that Leland was killed right before someone tore his store apart? And as far as helping my cousin Jefferson, it’s the only thing we’ve got.”
Silence in the room, except for the rustle of the chip bag going from hand to hand. “Well,” said Pelton finally, “I didn’t see nothing last night. Or hear nothing, neither. Any y’all?”
Headshakes, shrugs.
Hell, I thought. “What about the car you saw tonight? Can anyone describe it?”
Silence. Then: “Some four-door rambling wreck.” That came from the guy who’d thought Bill looked like a cop. “Silver rims, though. Confederate flag sticker on the back bumper, right side.”
I’d have expected some reaction to that—grunts, muttered curses—but no one said a word. It struck me that the Confederate flag might be a common sight around here. “Color?” I asked.
“Blue.”
“Green.”
“Black.”
A dark car at night. Okay. “How many people in it?”
A pause. “Two, maybe,” said Duverne. “But I ain’t sure.”
“Black? White?”
Now I got my grunts. “Ma’am, maybe you didn’t hear the part about the flag.”
Heat rose in my face. “Sorry. Just hoping for more details. Didn’t mean to offend.”
Nothing at all, except the woman on the stereo singing about some other no-good man.
I tried once more. “I don’t suppose anyone caught the license plate?”
One “Is she for real?” and some shaken heads.
Well, it had been a good idea.
19
We thanked the men of the Down Home Club, and we left. The cool quiet of the street returned to me the sense that the world could be a wide, reasonably friendly place.
“Wow,” said Bill, grinning as we crossed to the car. “That was like when you took me to that family association in Chinatown.”
“Except those old Chinese guys liked you even less.”
“Still,” said Pete, “you can see why these folks might want to hold onto a place they can call their own, and only their own.” He shook his head. “But besides the sociology lesson, we really didn’t get anything, did we?”
Before I could answer, a shout jolted me.
“Yo! Wait up.”
I spun around to see Duverne striding across the street. He looked at me and laughed. “Relax, ma’am. I just got one more thing to say.”
“Duverne, what’re you thinking, scaring my relations like that?” Pete demanded. “Cousin Lydia’s not used to our ways. Probably when someone shouts after you in New York City, they mean to shoot you.”
“Yeah.” Duverne grinned. “Like this guy”—he pointed at Bill—“is fixing to shoot me.”
“I’m not carrying,” said Bill.
“Fisticuffs?” Duverne took an old-fashioned boxing stance.
“If you want.”
Duverne dropped his arms. “Nah, next time. Look here, Pete. The nervous lady here said something about some strange thing. Brought to mind another strange thing. Got nothing to do with last night or tonight, neither. But I thought maybe y’all might want to know.”
Pete glanced at me. “Okay, Duverne, we’re listening.”
“See, a few weeks ago, maybe three, four, Leland come out the store with the trash just when I be coming up the street here, heading for the club. He ask do I know someone by the name of Lentitia McAdoo. Well, of course that’s old Miz McAdoo, so I tell him I do, but she just die a few days before. He kind of scratch his head, y’know how Leland do, and say, oh, she gone? I ask him why and he say, nothing, just he think he have something of hers.”
Duverne stopped.
“That’s it?” asked Pete.
“Yeah. It strike me kinda strange, he don’t even know who she might be, and he got something belong to her. And asking me about it right after she die. And her always ripping on Chinese, what he gonna have that’s hers, anyway? Ain’t no way she leave something by mistake in the store because ain’t no way she come to the store in the first place. Anyhow, maybe it don’t mean nothing. But I always like Leland. Like you, too, Pete. Can’t say as much for the company you keeping.” He grinned at me again. “But everyone around here hope you planning to keep the store going. And Jefferson, well damn, we seen that boy grow up across the street there. He ain’t kill Leland, you can take that to the bank.”
Duverne threw a fake punch at Bill, who fake ducked it. Chuckling, Duverne walked back into the Down Home Club.
In the car on the way to Pete’s, I asked about Lentitia McAdoo. “She’s the mother of Trevor and Tremaine, right?” I said. “Did you know her?”
“Barely ever heard her name before today, when Henry and them talked about her. Never met her. Never met Trevor, neither. And the only dealings I ever had with Tremaine were like yesterday, running into him someplace. Don’t believe he even knows my name. Can’t imagine what Leland thought he had that might be Miz McAdoo’s. Maybe whatever it was, I’ll find it when I clean up.”
“Pete,” I said, “this morning when we saw Tremaine, he and Pelton were having a big argument. Sounded like Tremaine was doing something in the club that Pelton didn’t like. Dealing drugs, do you think?”
“Could be. That would make Pelton mad as a hornet. He doesn’t want trouble in there any more than he wants blues-trail tourists. Just a place for him and his friends to hang out.”
We were all silent for a minute. Then Bill said, “I’m going to come right out and ask this, Pete. Could Tremaine have been dealing from Leland’s store?”
Pete’s voice went up a notch. “You taken leave of your mind? That’s full-out crazy.”
“It would explain the searches, if Tremaine’s stash was there. It might not have been something Leland wanted to do, but Tremaine might have been a hard man to turn down.”
“If Tremaine was threatening Leland, he’d have told me.”
“Are you sure?”
Pete’s only answer was an angry—but, it seemed to me, not entirely confident—silence.
“Pete,” I said, turning around from the front seat, “you understand that we have to look at everything? That’s how we do our job.”
After a moment, peering out the window into the darkness, he said, “Leland would’ve told me.”
No one spoke again on the drive. When we got home, I pulled out my MacBook Air and hooked up my hotspot. I typed in my New York State PI license number and password so I could get into the limited-access databases. I was looking for Anna Rae Ferguson.
Pete settled into his worn armchair. With the gruff air of a man making a peace offering, he said, “That laptop there, that’s the same as Jefferson’s. Except his is a touch bigger. That favored among Chinese?”
“It’s a good computer, but I don’t know about Chinese,” I said. “That cousin I was telling you about in New York, he’s got a whole garage full of computer equipment.” Something struck me. “Pete, where’s Jefferson’s laptop? Do you suppose he left it up in Oxford, or did he bring it down here with him?”
“Can’t imagine he left it. For geeks like him, that’s like leaving your toothbrush. I mean, he toted it over here on Thanksgiving so he could check his wagers while we watched the game.”
“Why did he need a computer?” I clicked some keys. “He couldn’t remember which teams he bet on?”
“Not how it works, those online sports books.”
“Not how what works? You don’t bet on teams?” I watched my screen.
“Not real ones. You pick players, could be from all different teams, and you’ve got them for the week, or the day, or the season—whatever you signed on for. That’s your ‘team.’ Looking at each one’s stats, that’s how you did.”
“And you play against other people who also picked random teams?”
“Not random,” Bill said from the other armchair. “You study the talent and pick players who complement each other’s skills. Or you could pick dark-horse players you believe in. They have long odds. If they perform, you can win big.”
I looked up from my database. “Or lose, I assume, if they don’t, which is why they’d be dark horses. What if you go with superstars?”
“You’re more likely to win, but not big.”
The light bulb went on. “That’s what you meant before, Pete, about whales fielding hundreds of lineups? If you’re betting on enough combinations, sooner or later you’ll hit.”
“Yup. And if a couple of your lineups hit big enough, it’ll offset the losing you do on the others.”
“I get it. And what you said, Pete—I agree. It doesn’t sound like fun. All math, no actual sports.”
“Spoken like a true jock,” said Bill.
“I don’t deny it.” I clicked into another database. “But Jefferson does it?”
“All the time.”
“Hmm. So if he brought his laptop to Clarksdale, do you think it could still be in the store? Or in the house?”
Pete shrugged. “Could be a herd of cows in there, under all that mess.”
“I’d love to check it out. Let’s have a look tomorrow before we go to Oxford.”
“Unless the sheriff has it,” Bill said. “Callie Leblanc would know that.”
“Damn, you’re right. Okay, we can ask her in the morning.” Something else occurred to me. “Did Leland have one?”
“A computer?” Pete laughed. “You saw his cash register. When things got complicated, he used Daddy’s old abacus. Computer.” He shook his head. “And while you’re there looking for Jefferson’s,” he said, his eyes avoiding both of us, “might as well take a look for Tremaine’s stash. Which isn’t there, by the way.”
I smiled and went back to my search. In my third database, I hit pay dirt. It turned up an address in Oxford for one, and only one, Anna Rae Ferguson. It showed no landline, but she did have a cell phone, and after a little coaxing, my database coughed up its number.
“You going to call her?” Pete asked.
“When we get there, if we have to. But I’d rather not. Even if she’s not in the family business, she’d probably be leery of phone calls from strangers. Let me think.” I did, but nothing popped to mind. As was often the case when that happened, I looked to Bill.
“Facebook,” he said.
“Good grief. I had no idea you even knew that word.”
“It’s not generally in my lexicon,” he acknowledged. “But it’ll be in Anna Rae’s. See if it tells us anything.”
I clicked over to Facebook, and of course Anna Rae Ferguson had a page. She also had an Instagram. In a matter of minutes, those sources revealed her fondness for football, chocolate, and a yellow dog named Bozo, whom she missed because he was back home with her big brother, Johnny, in a town I noticed she left unnamed. We saw photos of intramural Ultimate Frisbee games, a line of young women grinning at the camera, excited selfies at a Dixie Chicks concert, and then, there it was: Anna Rae Ferguson behind a coffeehouse counter, smiling as she displayed a heart drawn in the foam of a cappuccino.
I enlarged the photo until I could read the logo on the mug. “Café Café,” I said. “Cute.” A Google search gave us the café’s Oxford address and, as a bonus, the business hours. “Closed now. But they open at six.”
“Great.” Bill yawned. “You can call them then.”
I continued scrolling through Anna Rae’s page. “No visible boyfriend.” I peered at the photos of smiling college students, always in groups of three or more, the same dozen or so people rotating in and out in different combinations, all of them cheerful, athletic, and white.
“Could be she doesn’t have one,” Bill said.
I looked up. “Or she has one she doesn’t post about.”
“Interesting idea.” Bill nodded slowly. “You’re thinking she’s seeing Jefferson?”
“What?” Pete had seemed half-asleep in his chair, but now he perked right up. “Jefferson dating a Ferguson? You two must’ve been drinking crazy juice over there at the Shacks.”
“It might explain why he was in Burcell a few weeks ago,” I said. “He told Tolson Reeves it wasn’t about drugs, but he couldn’t tell him what it was.”
“Just hold on here. Boy goes courting to Burcell in broad daylight, what exactly is he keeping a secret, then?”
“Okay, you have a point.”
“And her, too,” Pete pushed on. “What’s keeping Anna Rae from posting it on that Facebook there, if Jefferson feels like he can just breeze in and out of her hometown? Who’s she hiding it from? No, that’s one of those ridiculous Yankee ideas, probably because y’all are tired. Dating a Ferguson.”
I wasn’t willing to give up the idea just yet, but we all certainly were tired. We said good night and I went to my room, but before I could sleep, I had one more job to do. I called my mother.
I was hoping she’d be asleep and I could just leave a voicemail, but no such luck. My mother’s sleep schedule is a thing of infinite nuance. You’re as likely to find her in bed at 8:00 P.M. as you are to find her sewing and watching 3:00 A.M. Cantonese cable TV.
“Hi, Ma, it’s me.”
“The phone has told me that, Ling Wan-ju. Have you solved the case?”
“No. It’s more complicated than it looked.”
“How is it complicated? Have you talked to Jefferson Tam? Has he told you what happened?”
“We didn’t have a chance. Ma, Jefferson Tam escaped from jail.”
“Escaped from jail? He ran away? Where did he go?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Someone must know, Ling Wan-ju. Maybe your cousin, Captain Pete Tam, will know. Have you asked him?”
“We’re staying with him. I’m in the spare bedroom, Bill’s in the basement,” I added, because there was no doubt she was about to ask. “Captain Pete’s been very hospitable. Though the tea down here is awful. It’s a strange place, Ma. I think you and Pa were right not to move here.”
“Of course we were.” Clearly, my validation of that decision wasn’t needed. “Ling Wan-ju, you must find Jefferson Tam. When people escape from jail, it makes them look guilty. It’s not good for your cousin to look guilty.”
“Ma,” I said gently, “it’s possible he is guilty.”
“No,” my mother said, and she couldn’t have been more definite. “You must solve this case. Then he will come home.”
I stifled a sigh. “Okay, Ma. We’re looking for him. But listen, I want to ask you something else. Why didn’t you ever tell me we had a politician cousin down here? Reynold Tam, the congressman who’s running for governor now?”
I could almost see my mother’s look of befuddlement. “Why would you ever have needed to know that?”
“Because he’s family?”
“Oh, Ling Wan-ju! We have a very large family, with many things about it that you don’t know.”
Yes, I thought, like the fact that your father was a gambler.
“If I filled your head with every detail about our family, you would never have room for anything else. Will knowing that Reynold Tam is a politician who wants to be governor help you solve your case?”
“No, but—”
“Please concentrate on the work you have gone to the Delta of Mississippi to do. Call me tomorrow when you have accomplished something. Give my best regards to Captain Pete Tam.”
With that, she was gone. I let out a sigh, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I was disappointed not to hear cicadas outside my window, but probably they’d have kept me up anyway.
