Markers (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 3) (11 page)

Eighteen

A Little Bit of Love Goes a Long Way

A cooling breeze blew from the northwest, drying the perspiration that had accumulated over much of Joshua's face and arms. The night was not much cooler than the day had been, but definitely prettier; it had come to life after dark. The warm night air was alive with lightning bugs. There must have been fifty-to-sixty of them flashing off and on, between him and the river. They were so bright, that when several lit up at the same time, it was as if they were lighting the path to the sandbar below. Joshua leaned back and inhaled deeply the aroma of the swamp lily that had bloomed overnight. It grew near the back porch and its scent could be smelled from twenty to thirty feet away even without a breeze. He rocked back and propped his booted feet on the railing and smiled to himself, enjoying the memories the scent of the lily had brought with it.

The lily was nearly five feet tall and probably that wide or more. It looked like one huge plant; actually, it was many. He had planted the lily bulbs there nearly thirty years earlier; the two bulbs he planted had multiplied many times over. Joshua even dug half of it up fifteen years earlier and planted it in the front yard; it was now the same size as the original one in the back yard. He knew he could divide both again and plant more somewhere else in his yard.

The lily had come from his grandmother's yard. She said it had belonged to her mother, and her mother before her, and so on. She did not know exactly how far back it went and did not want to venture a guess. However, she wanted him to know that it was a tradition in her family that when one of the children married and moved into their own homes, they carried with them a pair of bulbs dug from the mother’s lily that she swore had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old. She told him that she thought the original was somewhere near Savannah, Georgia; she said that was where her grandmother was from. Joshua thought she had called the lily a native
crinum
… but added that most people simply called them lilies. His lilies bloomed five to six times a year. They even bloomed in the wintertime if the weather stayed mild. Its pinkish white trumpet shaped flowers were one of Joshua’s favorite fragrances.

It had a sweet, woodsy, spicy aroma… he remembered her saying, “Joshua, this crinum represents the love of our family. We carry it forward, always forward. A little bit of love goes a long way,” she said with a smile, as she handed him the bulbs a few days after he moved to his cabin. “Just plant it and let it go. They hardly require any care. When you have a daughter, make sure you tell her the story, and when she marries, make sure she takes a set of bulbs with her to start her own crinums and have bulbs that she can pass down to her children… or, if you don’t have a daughter give them to your son. Your father took a set of these bulbs and planted them at the house he and your mother lived in on Joachim Street. You were just a baby at the time-he dug up the entire plant and moved it to Wilmer when y’all moved out there. It may still be there,” she said thoughtfully.

Both Joshua's grandparents had instilled the need to know where he came from in him. They both told stories of when they were children and what it was like growing up in those times. They told him of his grandparents and great-grandparents, which grandfather fought in what war and so on. According to them, he had four great-great-grandfathers that fought in the Civil War. One died during the Siege of Vicksburg, another died at Gettysburg, and one was wounded at Manassas Virginia and then again in the Battle of Chickamauga, but lived to be an old man. He died when he was eighty-five years old; that was Jeremiah Stokes, the one with the cinderblock marker. Joshua heard tell that he said after being wounded twice he learned better how to
dodge
them
bullets
. He figured if he was shot a third time that his luck would run out. It was an old wives tale, but they all believed that bad luck came in sets of three.

A light, shining through the trees from the direction of the main highway, drew Joshua’s attention to his quarter-mile long driveway. He wondered who would be coming to see him at that hour of the night-most decent folks were home in bed. After a moment he could tell the light was not bright enough to be a car or truck; it had to be a single headlight or a flashlight - so far, he had not heard any sound accompanying the light. Then, Joshua thought he heard faint engine noise-maybe a motorcycle or scooter. It was not loud enough to be Roy McGregor’s low-slung chopper; you could hear it a half mile away… Joshua thought of Emma’s moped - suddenly he knew who it was; Joshua became nervous. Normally, women did not make Joshua nervous, but for some insane reason, Emma Carr made him as nervous as a jackrabbit, and she shouldn’t; they had been through a lot together. The two of them had been as close as any two human beings can be. He knew every inch of her body, intimately, and she his. He took a large swallow of whiskey to calm the jitters in his stomach.

When Emma walked up to the porch, he could tell she was torn up about something and that she had been crying. She did not say a word, but her eyes did; they begged forgiveness for intruding. Joshua did not speak either and after a moment staring at each other, she climbed the steps, crawled onto his lap and assumed a fetal-like position.

He held her close-the warmth of her body stirring his emotions and his passion; he could feel himself becoming erect and tried to push his needs to the side and concentrate on Emma. He wondered what inner turmoil simmered beneath the surface.

He had told her if she ever needed him not to hesitate to come to him... Why was she there? What happened to bring her running to him? He felt and heard her sob softly; his heart ached for her. With his left hand, he smoothed her hair away from her face; it was still short, but back to its original dirty blond color. When he did, she placed her hand on his chest and snuggled closer.

Her hand on his chest felt hot, almost scorching his skin as it traveled to his shoulder, neck, and then up through his hair. When she looked up at him, the light from the kitchen shined directly into her eyes, they were mistier than when she first arrived. She was vulnerable and he did not want to take advantage of her. However, when she raised her lips to his and he felt the heat of them, they stoked his passion like the embers of a dying fire rekindled by gasoline.

Justifying his want, he argued with himself.
She needs me to hold her, to make her feel safe
… Emma turned and straddled him so that she was facing him, and as she kissed him passionately, she began unsnapping his shirt.

“Are you sure?” he whispered, when her lips briefly released his.

“Never been surer,” she mumbled as she ran her hands under his shirt and began messaging his pectoral muscles.

Joshua lowered his legs from the railing and stood. He carried Emma into the cabin and laid her on his bed, but she would not release him. Desperately, she clung to him, kissing him and tearing at his clothes trying to remove them. When he stood to remove his shirt, she slipped hers over her head. Her breasts were firm, nipples plump and erect, pointing heavenward. Joshua leaned down, took one in his mouth, and suckled as he removed the rest of his clothes.

While he removed his boots, she slipped her shorts off and reached to pull him to her. He resisted, but only for a moment. When she spread her legs, a perfect triangle of hair just below her belly, beckoned him. He wanted to take his time and make easy love to her, but it was as if she was frantic to get him inside her. She wrapped her long legs around him and pulled him to her; there was no stopping after that.

As soon as he entered her, she experienced an orgasm, which in turn caused him have one. He wanted to kick himself for being so weak, however, she seemed satisfied as he lay beside her and held her. A few minutes later, she fell asleep in his arms.

When Joshua was sure she slept, he slipped from the bed and left the room. Barefoot, he walked out onto the back porch and lit a cigarette. He sat down in his rocker and propped his bare feet on the railing. When he heard a mosquito buzzing near his ear, he was glad that he had slipped his pants and shirt on. He finished the glass of whiskey he was drinking when Emma arrived and poured him another. The buzzing of the mosquito caused him to think about screening in his porch. And, although he had fought doing it for over twenty-five years, he was seriously considering it. To him, screen wire was near about the same as a wall, and he did not like feeling shut up; it literally smothered him.

Joshua sat there, smoked, and drank until nearly daylight; that was when he heard movement inside. He had almost forgotten that Emma was there. The flushing of the toilet reminded him.

When he walked into the kitchen, Emma stood with her hand to her throat, staring at the bloodstained floor. Even though he had scrubbed the floor several times with different substances, a large rust colored stain remained. The nearly two hundred year old wooden floors were porous; they had absorbed Emma’s blood like a sponge.

“If it hadn’t been for you, I would have died that day,” she said as she moved toward the sink. She filled the pot with water and put coffee on. “It’s not too early is it?”

Joshua had stood in the same spot the entire time he had been inside and it took a moment for him to realize it. He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down.

“No, its not too early,” he replied, “John Metcalf was here too, Emma-if not for him, you would
definitely
be dead. I could not have done it all on my own.”

“Don’t say that, Sheriff. I know that you could have saved me all by yourself, if you wanted to; you’re the toughest man I know.”

“There are many men tougher than I am, Emma - you just have to give them a chance. You could find one that would be protective of you and love you the way you want to be loved. I’m too old and set in my ways to change.”

“I am giving them a chance, Sheriff. I see John all the time. I even talked with a man I met at work… they are not you. If I could find another you-”

“You need someone better than me, darlin’,” he said softly, then countered his sentence by saying, “you’re barely twenty years old, Emma, you have plenty of time; don’t rush it. If it’s meant to be it’ll come.” He could have kicked himself for saying it. Did he say it because he actually wanted her to take her time to find the perfect mate, if such a thing even existed, or did he say it because he wanted her to stay with the arrangement they had…

Nineteen

Crosshairs

“
You know I smoked a lot of grass, oh lord I popped a lot of pills… but I never touched nothing that my spirit couldn’t kill. I said, God… damn, yeah, the pusher man
!” Joshua sung along with Steppenwolf as he drove the back roads of Mobile County. He was headed toward the community of Turnerville. Of all the places to choose from to bury the McIllwain’s, the out-of-towners had chosen Forest Memorial Gardens, which was off the beaten path and nearly twenty miles north of the city; but Joshua would be damned if he wasn’t going to be sitting there, waiting to talk with them as soon as the funeral was over.

He knew something was off about those people and they further confirmed his suspicions when they chose to bury their son and daughter-in-law in Mobile County, instead of taking the bodies’ home to Atlanta for burial. Expense was not the reason for doing so - they appeared to be filthy rich. There was not any feeling there…

When McIllwain’s father talked with him the day before, he seemed unaffected by his son’s death and as cold as a fish. They had not shown the slightest interest in Anna Leigh either, which was not at all right, especially if she was the last link-the only blood descendant he and his wife had to their son… Joshua was truly worried about the baby - he intended to find out just what made them tick. As unfeeling as those people were, there was no telling where she would end up.

The music temporarily forgotten, Joshua took a deep breath and reached for his cigarettes. He lit one and inhaled deeply, as if the smoke going into his lungs would make everything clearer. He knew he should have called Metcalf to see if he had found out anymore on the McIllwains’. The last time he talked with him, he said that an autopsy was
not
being performed on Jonathan McIllwain to rule out foul play. In addition to that, he told him that the family requested the body to be sent straight to the mortuary so preparations for burial could begin.

Joshua knew he probably should have called Barnes and conferred with him too. Barnes had said that he was going to check the Bureaus databank and see exactly what they had on the McIllwain’s and their role in the trafficking business. That was several days before; surely he should have heard something by now, thought Joshua as he turned off Walter Moore Road onto Celeste Road.

When he reached the cemetery, there were only the gravediggers and the vault company there; they were putting the vaults in place.

Joshua parked behind the cemetery’s storage building, got out and walked over to stand beneath a cedar tree. He figured he would easily blend in with the regular folks attending the funeral, he was not in uniform; to find him so was a rare occasion. Seeing the two graves dug side by side brought to mind the last time he attended a double funeral, it was when Willie and Lacey Stringer were murdered back in 1970. He lit a cigarette, took a long draw, and concentrated on the workers. The last thing he wanted to do was dredge up visions of those murders. He walked back to his car, got a pack of smokes, and then walked back to the cedar tree to wait.

He was surprised that only one limousine followed the two hearses as they drove into the cemetery. The vault employee and the gravediggers had moved back by the storage building and were waiting to close the graves as soon as the services were over.

The funeral director and his associate backed the first hearse as near to the graves as they could and then got out. They opened the back doors, took out a rolling casket stand, and slid the first coffin onto it. The gravediggers had laid out several sheets of plywood leading up to the burial place for getting the coffins there without the assistance of pallbearers. The Director and his man rolled the coffin to one of the openings, and with the help of a couple of the gravediggers, picked it up, and then set it over the opening. The driver moved that hearse and then backed the other one as close as he could. Joshua heard him tell the director that they were going to need more help, that Mr. McIllwain’s coffin weighed nearly a hundred pounds more than Mrs. McIllwain’s did. Joshua along with several workers stepped forward to help. He and the other men moved it easily enough and placed it onto the straps that topped the grave opening. These were used to lower the casket into the vault opening.

After helping set the coffin in place, Joshua and the workers stepped back over to the cedar tree to wait. He leaned against it while he smoked another cigarette. He was surprised to see that the only people attending the funeral were the same five people he had seen at the McIllwain residence. The older man who was supposed to be McIllwain’s father, showed no emotion other than annoyance. The two younger men did not appear moved to tears either. The two younger women stood behind them. Joshua zeroed in on them. He watched every move, every expression that crossed their faces. He wanted to see if either of them cared enough to show it. The only one to show any emotion at all was the one that resembled the dead woman. She appeared to be about the same age as Lita Folb McIllwain and actually favored her a lot. Their features were almost identical; Joshua wondered if they could be sisters, maybe even twins. He circled around the storage building and walked up to stand near the limo to wait. He was determined to question her before they left the cemetery.

As soon as they bowed their heads, he moved up behind them to stand beside her. She glanced sideways at him then quickly closed her eyes again. When the last words were spoken and they raised their heads, he took the young woman by the elbow and told her he needed to speak with her concerning Lita McIllwain’s demise. Tears immediately welled up in her eyes. The older, stolid, man grabbed Joshua’s arm and told him that he could not speak with his daughter in law.

“I’m the sheriff of this county and I’ll speak with who I damn well please, Mr. McIllwain; and it will be to your best interest, if you let go of my arm.”

If looks could kill, Joshua would have dropped dead in his tracks from the look the older man gave him before he saw that Joshua’s free hand was holding a weapon. Joshua had removed his holster when he got to the cemetery, but had stuck his revolver in the back of his waistband in case he needed it. Once he saw the gun in Joshua’s hand, he backed off. Joshua watched him visibly swallow his pride.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff, but as you can imagine, this has been a trying time for my family. First, Olita’s death, and then my son taking his life, my wife taking to her bed, I do not mean to be so hard, but I am trying to protect them. I would not want the emotional trauma to cause more anguish than it should.”

Joshua wondered just how much
anguish,
the death of a sibling or loved one would bring to a person other than himself. There was something about the man that made Joshua’s skin crawl and it was not just his deep Georgian drawl that ground on Joshua’s nerves, it was his whole persona.

“Olita was Lola’s sister. That is why I did not want you to pressure her,” said the elder McIllwain. “As you can imagine, she is already traumatized by all of this.”

“Yes, I imagine so; however, her resemblance to the late Mrs. McIllwain is exactly why I wanted to speak with her. Now, if you will excuse us, we should be done shortly.” When one of the men started to follow them, Joshua turned and said, “Please wait here.” He took the girl by the arm and began walking her toward his parked cruiser. From the older McIllwain’s demeanor and attitude, Joshua would not put it past him sacrificing one son, so that the others could continue the lifestyle they lived without being caught.

When they got to his car, he sat her in the passenger seat and shut the door. He then walked around to the driver’s side and after glancing over to the limo, got behind the wheel. He could tell the woman was afraid, but his gut told him she was not afraid of him. If he had to guess, her father-in-law was the one that frightened her. That alone verified in Joshua’s mind that what Lita McIllwain told him was true.

“Ms McIllwain, it is McIllwain isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is” she mumbled.

“Lita McIllwain was your sister, right?”

“Yes, she is, was… can you please tell me exactly how my sister died?” the woman’s voice immediately took Joshua to the crash site and his conversation with Lita. Their voices and faces were so similar that it was as if he was talking to a ghost.

“She died in an automobile accident.”

“Are you sure,” the woman’s voice lowered to almost a whisper, “that my sister was not murdered by her husband?”

“No, I don’t think so, but it is possible.”

“It is more than possible…”

“Then you will testify to that, if we can prove it-”

“No, I will not,” she said quickly, cutting him off from finishing his question.

“But she had a child with her-a child that could now be in danger,” little Anna Leigh’s bright blue eyes and happy smile flashed through Joshua’s mind.

“I have children too, Sheriff. My children are my life. I have to be there for them… My sister is dead; I will take her child and raise her as my own; it is what she would have wanted. I just wanted you to know her death was not an accident-she was running away, that is something she should not have done…”

“Your sister told me that she was brought over here and sold when she was a young girl. If that is true then you were too, were you not?” Lola McIllwain had nodded her head as he spoke verifying her sister’s statement.

“I know that girls and boys are often stolen and used as sex slaves… I have read about it in the newspapers, but Sherriff, my sister was just nine years old when we came here, I was thirteen. I never told her the truth of how we came to be here. I would rather she believe we were stolen from our home, than to tell her the truth… but now I wish I had. I could not tell her that our father sold us to those men; they did not steal us. He was only going to sell me, but I clung to my sister; I was not going to leave her with that monster! That sort of thing happened in our country, and from what some of the others in the shipping container told me, the same happened to them in their countries; they were also sold into slavery by their families.”

“But-”

“No, Sheriff. I owe my and my sister’s safe and comfortable lives to my husband’s family. They took us in and cared for us as if we were their children. She never should have run away. She told me of her fears, but her fears were unjust. Her husband would never have used his own child like that. He never physically lay a hand on my sister or Anna Leigh, at least not that I am aware of… I did not believe he could hurt her at all until he admitted to my husband that he cut the brake line on her car. When he realized she was going to leave him-he loved her very much, Sheriff. He had loved her since she was a child. When he realized she was dead by his hand, he could not live without her and he could not live with what he had done, so he took his own life. He did not even think of the child-I know this because he called us and told us what he had done. He was responsible for her death, but he killed himself. There is no one to hold accountable other than him, a dead man, and our own father in Lithuania.”

As she talked, Joshua listened quietly, but was not convinced.

“Why are you so certain that her fears were unwarranted?”

“Because… when we were children, the men respected us. My father-in-law may seem harsh, and he is firm with his children. Our husbands did not touch us. There was never any sexual contact until we were married… it was a safe environment to live in.

My own… my father began coming to my bed when I was nine years old, Sheriff… I was not a virgin when I went into my husband’s bed, and I thank God everyday that he did not turn me away as men in my own country would have done.”

Joshua believed that Lola believed what she was telling him was true, however, the fear and anguish Lita McIllwain showed while lying on the side of the highway caused him to question Lola further.

“Maybe you did not know your brother-in-law, as well as you think you did. Your sister seemed genuinely fearful for her life-she even called her husband “master”. That doesn’t sound like a happy on both sides of the ring marriage to me.”

“Sheriff, my sister took after our father; she had mental issues-she was hospitalized several times as a teenager. The doctors said Lita was bipolar… After Anna Leigh was born, she was delusional; she was again hospitalized. She thought she had two babies and that they kept one and sold it… I am telling you this, Sheriff, so that you will see and understand my sister’s condition. If she missed her medications she became delusional; some things she believed to be true were not true, and she could seem very rational even when the things going on in her head were just that - things going on in
her
head.”

“I did not know of her mental condition… that does shed new light on the case. However, it does not shed light on why your father-in-law is so adamant in his protection of the family.”

“But it does, Sheriff. He is just trying to protect his family, to protect us. He has lost his youngest son… he did not want to bring shame on the family by this tragedy. ”

Joshua lit a cigarette and took long drag.

“You’re free to go… If you ever need help with the baby, get in touch with me.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I am sure we will be fine once we get home. And, thank you for your understanding.” Lola opened the door and got out. Joshua watched her walk to the limo. The family looked relieved as they got into the limo and left.