Effigies (11 page)

An image of white sheets and hoods flashed through Faye’s head, and her skin crawled. “They say confession is good for the soul. Sounds like this guy has some atonement to do. Maybe he’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“Let’s hope so. And I might get lucky and learn something about Calhoun’s killing, too. There have always been rumors that his buddy Preston Silver was big in the local Klan. The KKK is a shadow of its old self now, and thank God for that, but Preston’s getting up there in years. He could have been part of some nasty things, back in the day. And maybe Calhoun was, too.”

“Nailing a Klansman or two is a good use of a sheriff’s time.”

“Well, I like to think so.”

They returned to Judd’s side. His color was improving, and the pain-generated tension around his closed eyes had eased.

“Can I take you back to your hotel?” Neely asked gently. “I’m going back to town, anyway.”

“I can drive,” he insisted, though his trembling hands said otherwise. “I can’t just leave my car out here.”

“I’ll bring it,” Faye offered.

“You’ll need to get back out here to work, and the sheriff has other places to be,” Joe pointed out quickly. “I’ll drive Mr. Judd, Faye, and you can follow in your car.” Having just earned his driver’s license, after several frustrating efforts to pass the written test, he was always eager to exercise his new independence. Plus, Joe was, by nature, happiest when he was helping someone else.

But the sheriff was shaking her head. “I want to drive the congressman myself. I’ll just feel better if I can keep an eye on him till he’s feeling better.”

Faye didn’t really think Neely needed to add another older man in ill health to her list of burdens, but she could see that there would be no arguing with the sheriff. She herself had nursed both her mother and her grandmother through their last illnesses, and she recognized a born caretaker when she saw one. If she got a chance, she wanted to tell Neely that it was no crime to take care of herself now and then.

Joe had ciphered through the vehicle situation and come up with a second-best scenario. “Okay. We take three cars. The sheriff drives Mr. Judd in her car. Faye follows in his car. And I bring up the rear in Faye’s car, so I can take her back to work.”

“Good plan,” Faye said. Within minutes, their convoy was pulling out of the Nails’ driveway. The road into Philadelphia was deserted—probably because everyone with a pulse was at the Fair—so they made good time.

Faye knew that Judd was staying at the same hotel as the archaeologists. Owned by the Choctaws, it boasted a wide range of amenities, including a casino. Ex-congressmen might be accustomed to such luxury, but archaeologists weren’t. Faye had unkinked her muscles nearly every night since they arrived in the nice, toasty sauna.

She was looking forward to more of the same, and not paying very much attention to the road, when Neely swung a hard right into a parking lot. By taking the turn at a higher rate of speed than was wise (all the while hoping that the sheriff didn’t write her up for reckless driving) she managed to follow. Joe, whose reflexes were perfect, as were his powers of observation, made the turn effortlessly. And to think that the state of Florida hadn’t wanted to let him drive. Faye was still irate on his behalf over that snub.

As Faye put the car in park, Neely tapped on her window and Faye lowered it. “Would you hand me Mr. Judd’s pills out of the glove box? He needs to refill one of his prescriptions. I’ll go in and do it for him. Would you and Joe like to sit with him while I’m gone?”

“No problem,” Faye said, rounding up Joe and walking over to the sheriff’s car. She gestured for Joe to join Judd in the front seat, while she sat in the back behind the divider that protected the sheriff from hardened criminals. From the look of him, Joe enjoyed the sight of her back there entirely too much.

Judd nodded at Neely’s back as she disappeared into the pharmacy. “She’s worse than my wife.”

Faye raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I told Neely I wanted to get a look at that old cemetery, just to see if I could find the spot where I saw that marijuana field all those years ago. Maybe it’s the same place where Mr. Calhoun was killed. She said ‘No,’ and gave me a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t go. First, she said that the idea that I was attacked to keep me from telling somebody about the pot field is far-fetched. She said, ‘Mr. Judd, you grew up here. You knew that your attack was racially motivated while it was happening, and you know it now.’”

“That’s what she told me,” Faye said. “Just because she believes it doesn’t make it true.”

“My point, exactly. Then, she pointed out that Calhoun’s widow owns all that land now, and Neely says she’s more prejudiced than her husband ever was. Neely declared that she’d never allow me to set foot on it. Actually, what the sheriff really said was, ‘That woman would shoot you dead before she’d let you traipse over her property looking for evidence that her husband’s been growing pot for forty years.’”

“Well, the sheriff knows her jurisdiction,” Faye pointed out. “She might be right about Mrs. Calhoun.”

Judd shrugged. “I don’t know the woman, so I can’t say. She doesn’t sound like a real reasonable person, for sure. The sheriff says that even now, with him being found dead in the middle of his own field full of contraband, his wife’s insisting that he didn’t plant it. She claims that somebody else must have planted it, then, when he stumbled onto it on his own property, he got killed by the real drug dealer.”

“People generally believe what they want to be true,” Joe said.

“Yes,” said Judd, “but that doesn’t help me any. The sheriff told me to give it up, that she wouldn’t help me look for the truth.”

“I will,” said Faye.

Chapter Ten

Neely plopped down in the driver’s seat. Faye tried to look like she hadn’t just been discussing the possibility of doing an end run around her authority as a sheriff. She willed Joe and Mr. Judd to do the same thing.

Neely pulled the pill case that held Judd’s routine medications out of her purse. Opening the bottle, she put one pill in each slot, then dropped the empty bottle into a wastebasket on the car’s floorboard. She did it methodically, talking all the while, like someone who sorted other people’s medications all the time. Which, of course, she did. Remembering Neely’s father’s condition, Faye understood her solicitous care of Mr. Judd a little better.

“I just got you a week’s worth of this pill, to tide you over until you get home to your own pharmacy.” Gesturing with the pill box toward the sign reading
Silver’s Pharmacy and Sundries
, she said, “I don’t know why I still come here. Probably because my folks shopped here and their folks before them. Daddy gets all upset whenever I do something different from what he’s used to. When Walgreens opened a store near our house, I tried to transfer all his prescriptions there. I thought it would make life a little easier if I used a store closer to home. That was a joke. Daddy wouldn’t get out of the car, then he wouldn’t take the pills. I guess I’m stuck with Preston Silver as my pharmacist for the rest of my natural life.”

Faye reflected that this wasn’t strictly true. Neely was only stuck with Silver for the rest of her
father’s
natural life, but it wouldn’t be kind to split hairs and point that out.

Neely handed the pill case, filled and up-to-date, to Mr. Judd. “Every time I come here, Preston Silver stands there and looks at me with those nasty lizard eyes while he counts my pills. Gives me the creeps.”

“I’d say he’s more dragon than lizard,” Judd said quietly. “Everybody knew he was big in the Klan, even back when I lived here. He’s bound to be some kind of Grand Dragon by now.”

“I infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan once. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I did some informal spying,” Neely said.

“I’m not sure I’d be talking about that,” Judd said. “They’re not completely toothless, even now.”

“Um…Being the only white person in the car, I guess it’s okay for me to say that none of you look like folks who are likely to be card-carrying members,” she pointed out. “Besides, it was years ago, when I was young and stupid. Eighteen, maybe. I was dating a guy who was a member, and he sneaked me in. There’s an upside and a downside to wearing hoods. I couldn’t tell who else was there, but they didn’t know who I was, either. All they knew was that I was there because a member had vouched for me. But you know what? A hood can’t cover your voice.”

Judd put a hand over his eyes, and Faye remembered that his attacker had pulled a hood over his face before beating him. Neely didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. She kept talking.

“I heard an impassioned speech introducing a particularly high-ranking bigot, and there was no mistaking the voice. Preston Silver was there that night, and he was not a casual attendee. He wasn’t there just because he hoped his membership would help him professionally, like some kind of perverted Rotary Club. He was a true believer. The things he said turned my stomach. Actually, they changed my life. Even looking back at myself with the harshest eye possible, I wouldn’t say I was ever a racist. I wasn’t taught it at home.” Her right hand wandered upward to her badge and gave it a little stroke. “Little girls were shielded from that ugliness in a lot of ways. But I just never gave a second thought to the fact that white people and black people lived their own separate lives, and that some people thought it was okay for us white people to make their lives miserable. I left the meeting before Preston finished spewing garbage, and I broke up with my idiot boyfriend, the Klansman, that very night.”

Judd had dropped his hand from his eyes. Those eyes were fastened on her face.

“It took me four years of college to decide to come back home,” she went on. “Here’s what I figured. It’s true that there were a lot of people at that meeting—I counted them—but there’s a whole lot more people living in this county that
weren’t
there. It’s not right to let a few evil people run things. The Klan has lost a lot of power since then, and it’s because of people like me who didn’t leave. We stayed and made our home a better place.”

“Do you think Silver might have been the man who attacked me?” Judd asked quietly.

“He would be at the top of my list, but he wouldn’t be the only one,” Neely said. She cranked the engine, signaling to Faye and Joe that it was time to get out of the car. “We need to get you back to the hotel, so you can get some rest.”

“Thank you,” Judd said. “It’s nice to know that somebody like you is taking care of things.”

Faye was glad to see Mr. Judd looking a lot stronger as she, Joe, and Neely escorted him back to his room. There was a survivor’s swing to his walk that said a little angina and high blood pressure couldn’t get him down.

It was slow going, making their way through the slot machine obstacle course in the hotel lobby. The narrow aisles between the one-armed bandits were thronged with people who wanted to wish the former Congressman well. Though no one knew how ill he had been barely an hour before, everyone knew by now what had happened to him in 1965.

Several hotel employees left their posts and rushed to shake his hand. Many of them were Choctaws and, thus, not just employees but co-owners of the sprawling casino/hotel complex. Their guests joined them in crowding around the sick man, each of them saying that they personally had no idea who had attacked him, but surely someone else would know.

Sheriff Rutland finally barked, “Back off! The man needs to breathe.” At her signal, Joe gently fended off the worst offenders by sheer physical intimidation. Faye just stood close to Mr. Judd and let him lean on her arm. The three of them formed a protective bubble around Judd and rushed him across the lobby. Ever the politician, Judd smiled, waved, and shook hands, even as he was being hustled away from his fawning constituency.

Only one person had the tenacity to stay with them until they reached the elevator. Faye guessed that Neely had better sense than to let anyone know where Judd’s room was, and Faye was right. When Joe reached out to press the button, Neely stayed his hand and turned to face their follower.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I have an urgent request for Congressman Judd.”

Faye was in the mood to tell him to write a letter to his own congressman. That mood passed when she looked up into the man’s face. He had the strong, proud, ebony-dark features of west Africa, the homeland of virtually all Americans of African descent, and he had the rangy, powerful body a face like that demanded. He was also the most handsome man Faye had ever seen. Excepting, of course, Joe.

His face and form seemed to have the same effect on Neely as it had on Faye, because the sheriff did nothing to stop him from making his pitch. Judd, himself, did nothing to stop him. In fact, he encouraged him, reaching out a hand and responding like a man who truly believes in his party and what it stands for. “Nice to meet you, son. May I presume that you, too, are a Democrat?”

“I will support any political party who gives my people their due. I haven’t seen one of those yet.”

“I’m listening. But why don’t you tell me your name, first?”

“My name is Ross Donnelly.” Spreading well-muscled arms sheathed in a well-fitting business suit, Donnelly flung his hands outward and said, “Look around you, sir, at this fine hotel. It makes money for the Choctaws, every day. What does black America have that can compare with this?”

Judd’s brow grew a bit more furrowed. “You think we should build some casinos?”

The outstretched hands clenched into fists, and Donnelly’s low voice boomed as strongly as if he were the one who was a politician. “No. I think we deserve compensation for historic wrongs. Native Americans were surely mistreated. They were herded onto reservations, and even the income due them from the use of those lands was misused by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Stolen. But they at least had some land, and they had their sovereignty. Some of them were lucky enough to find oil or minerals on that land. Some of them have built casinos, where the rest of America lines up for the chance to hand over money, every day and every night. Some of them, like the Choctaw, have built an empire on the scrap of land that nobody else wanted. That land was a form of capital. I just think my people deserve the capital they need to build a better life.”

Judd nodded, as if it had taken him a moment to gather the gist of Donnelly’s argument. “You’re talking about reparations. That’s a hot topic, Ross.”

“Why shouldn’t we be compensated for the wealth we left behind in Africa? Why shouldn’t we inherit the payment our enslaved ancestors didn’t receive for their labor? Why shouldn’t we have the chance to claw our way up society’s ladder, like the Choctaws have? Don’t you think we’re due something, sir?”

He gazed into Judd’s eyes, which were unreadable. Then he turned his attention to Faye. “Don’t you?”

Faye, who had relentlessly pursued regaining the lands stolen from her African-American ancestors during the Jim Crow years, wasn’t sure she agreed with Ross, but she couldn’t bring herself to say no. She broke the festering silence by introducing herself, instead. Extending a hand, she said, “My name’s Faye Longchamp. You make an interesting argument.”

Donnelly reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a sleek case full of business cards. His dark eyes communicated something different each time he handed out a card. When fastened on Faye, their expression suggested that he had more than business on his mind. When directed at Joe and Sheriff Rutland, his expression was more perfunctory, as if he’d rather not give personal information to law enforcement, nor to a man whose allegiance might be elsewhere. If Joe were wearing his customary Native American garb, instead of continuing his odd campaign to look like a white man, Donnelly might have guarded his words still more carefully.

Turning his attention to Judd last, he looked at him like a man approaching an equal for help with a cause that concerned them both. As Ross extended the card in the older man’s direction, Judd turned and pressed the elevator button, saying, “I’d like to hear more of your thoughts, Ross. I’m feeling a little tired right now, but there’s no reason you can’t come up and talk to me while I relax a little.”

Would it take a coronary to make Mr. Judd rest? Faye thought Neely was going to roll her eyes in frustration. She wanted to tell her to just let it go. Some people simply can’t be protected from themselves.

Waving good-bye to Neely after they’d left Mr. Judd and Ross in Judd’s suite, Faye led Joe toward the grill where the hotel’s cheaper lunches were to be had. “Let’s grab a bite here. I want to talk to Mr. Judd, and I don’t want to do it in front of his new friend Ross.”

“You mean
your
new friend Ross.”

Faye smirked instead of answering him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Joe said, nodding his thanks to the waitress for his burger and fries. “I noticed that you’ve been fretting over the sheriff suspecting that somebody on Dr. Mailer’s team might have killed Mr. Calhoun.”

“Well, I don’t like to think about somebody who’s innocent being accused of murder.” Faye didn’t point out that her biggest fear had been that the sheriff would focus on Joe as a suspect. Looking out for her other friends had always been secondary to protecting Joe. She wasn’t sure whether he understood that.

“So you helped the sheriff figure out that the murder weapon was old, which took some focus off any flintknappers. Mostly off of me, I guess.”

Okay. So maybe Joe
had
understood how desperate she’d been to keep him off Neely Rutland’s suspect list.

Joe was still talking. “You said it bothered you to tell her that Bodie was a champion atlatl thrower. But how well do you know Bodie, anyway?”

“Well, he was the teaching assistant in my lithics lab last semester. A bunch of us went to happy hour a couple of times, and he was in the group. I went to a party at his house, once. And…well, that’s about all. But he seems like a nice guy.”