Micanopy in Shadow (2 page)

Ada heard the dim drone of the engine. She connected the sound with nothing. She sagged, knees collapsing. Wet grass pressed against her legs, the grit of the roadbed against her outstretched hand. Briers dragged her shawl from her shoulders. She crawled.

Across the street at the rear of a large frame house a door opened. An acetylene light threw a white glare over the backyard. Fifteen-year old Rosebud Washington trudged down the back steps, listened, and stared over at the road and the pond. For a few seconds she paused, dark eyes wide. Then she ducked her head, tugged on her ragged sweater, and spun toward the back gate. The doings of white folks were none of her business. It was safer not to look.

Rosebud knew how to stoop outdoors over a galvanized washtub and scrub white folks’ clothes, how to hang wet wash on a line, how to iron the mister’s shirts. To know more was dangerous. Only last week the Klan from Williston tore through Micanopy in their Model T’s—demons in peaked white hoods, shouting threats, burning a cross in her cousin’s front yard. Rosebud hurried on down the path into the next street and turned toward home. Only a short distance away stood the tiny cement block jail where her father spent more than one terror-filled night. Klansmen lived in this town, too. Rosebud made herself small, invisible, and quiet. She would tell no one but her family what she saw.

Ada felt hands on her shoulders.
Someone come to help
? But she was dragged. The skin on her legs stung. A sudden rush of cold water jolted her awake. Rank odor, then water, filled her nostrils. She lifted her head, struggled to breathe, gasped. Her scream became a strangled cough. She shuddered, strained upward. A stronger force pressed her down, held her under. Ada fought fee-bly—too weak, mind too clogged. Her skirt and blouse billowed about her, filling with water, drawing her into a world of blackness.

As she dropped below the surface scum, she flung out one arm. Her fingers snatched fabric, closed around a flimsy chain and something hard and round. She forgot what it was, forgot everything. It sank with her.

The last sound she heard was the nasal call of a low-flying nighthawk. The last image was of her small daughter’s face.

ONE
 

2003

Brandy had been having a cup of tea when her grandmother first asked for her help. She had pinned Brandy with those fierce gray eyes, set down her cup, and said, “You’re my last chance. No one else cares anymore. I’m the only one. At my age how much more time do I have?”

How could she turn her grandmother down? The woman was eighty-three.

When she told Brandy about the home restoration job in Micanopy, Brandy called her husband’s boss and suggested it was made to order for John. She had engineered the couple’s move from Tampa to an apartment near her grandmother’s home. That was why a month later she found herself rocketing out of her grandmother’s driveway in the passenger seat of the 1985 Ford pickup. They were on a mission.

It was one of those early fall days in Florida. The sun was no longer hot, but the chill had not yet arrived. The little truck swerved around in the narrow street in front of her grandmother’s cottage and rattled on down the block.

“Cold cases are solved all the time now,” Brandy said. “No reason this one can’t be.” She knew she was being rash, but in the past she had inserted herself into three unsolved cases and been successful. Brandy decided not to mention that in those cases Sheriff’s Office detectives had been essential. They would not be involved this time, not after all these years.

In the bed of the pickup a toolbox clanked against a metal ladder. Brandy suspected her grandmother still climbed it to paint trim or repair gutters. Brandy avoided looking at the curb as it whirled past.

Her grandmother, in firm control of the wheel, looked over at Brandy. “Before I die, I want to know why my mother drowned on her one—her only—day in Micanopy.”

“An eighty-one year old cold case—it’s got to be a record.”

Hope O’Bannon let up on the gas, the muscles of her face taut. “I’d about given up after all these years, and that’s the truth, what with my teaching and your granddad’s illnesses, but I’ve got time now. Something drove my mother to leave me. The coroner’s jury thought she killed herself.” She turned back to the road and headed for downtown Micanopy. “I’ve always had my doubts. We’ll begin by re-tracing my mother’s steps.” The aging Ford clattered around a corner of Cholokka Boulevard and gathered speed.

Brandy admired the sharp planes and high cheekbones of Hope’s face. Her own she thought too round—yet she had the same prominent bones and the same fair skin, the same sprinkle of freckles that went with red hair. As Brandy neared thirty, her hair had become darker. Hope’s turned to silver years ago. The old lady pulled it back and tied it with a scarf that fell over the collar of her white shirt. She wore pants long before they were fashionable, long before women routinely went about in jeans.

She eased off on the gas again and shot Brandy a fiery look. “Someone in this town knows what happened—that I’m sure of. Somebody knows who she was and why she died. The monument in the cemetery proves that.”

Brandy reached into her canvas bag for her notepad and pencil, then ducked her head a little and looked up at her grandmother with a grin. It was a habit when she was about to solicit a favor or spring an idea, especially one that might be troubling. “I’ve pitched a story about this case to the
St. Pete Times
. An account of what happened to Ada Losterman would make a great feature.” She gave the notepad a firm tap. “Royalties from my Seminole Indian book give me free time for a while. An account of Micanopy with emphasis on Ada Losterman might make another book.”

Brandy couldn’t tell if going public with the story bothered her. Hope was silent as the old truck clattered on down the boulevard. “I ought to warn you,” she said at last. “People here don’t like airing their dirty linen to strangers. My mother’s death always stuck in their craw. A blot on the town, to tell the truth.”

“I’ll try not to step on any toes.”

Brandy was ashamed that she hadn’t already researched her own great-grandmother’s fate. Newspaper reporting had taken her time, and she had to consider her husband, too. Then came the baby. It hadn’t been easy even now, when Brad was two. But Brandy had managed. When a prominent resident decided to restore his family home, Brandy made a few calls and the prospect asked John’s Gainesville office for a bid. She knew he’d be tapped. Although he was working at the time in his firm’s Tampa office, his specialty was in historic houses. Now John was renovating the century old home at the edge of Micanopy and bidding on other jobs in the area.

The pickup ground to a stop again, the third time in a few blocks that Hope slowed from the speed limit to a crawl or halted. Brandy hoped no one was behind them.

Hope faced her. “My mother started out from the hotel on a day in October like today—about one o’clock.” For a moment she gazed at the block of nineteenth and early twentieth century houses, collecting her thoughts. “Mother would’ve been twenty-three then. In 1921 the train station was called Micanopy Junction. She probably got on the train in Jacksonville. A woman testified she saw her in one of the cars. Later she was seen at the station here. It’s long gone, of course. The woman said my mother looked around, like she was searching for someone.”

The pickup crept on down Cholokka Boulevard. “We know a driver picked her up in a buckboard and took her to the Haven Hotel. The driver didn’t remember anything special about her. Lots of people visited here in those days. Young women didn’t usually travel alone then, but she had me with her. She chose the cheapest hotel. That might tell us something.”

With a sun-browned hand, Hope pointed to the right. “The hotel stood back there. It burned in the late thirties, like a lot of other wooden buildings in town. By then I was already grown.”

“Your mother started out walking?”

The look in Hope’s gray eyes softened. It always did when she talked about the mother she could scarcely remember. “She talked to Mrs. Haven and asked her to watch me. She promised to be back soon. She didn’t sign the guest book or pay for a room. Mother Haven got the idea she hoped to stay somewhere else that night.”

“So she walked down town?”

“That’s probably why she didn’t take me.” Her eyebrows arched at Brandy. “People expected to walk then. They were the better for it.”

The little truck coasted along Cholokka Boulevard, past the two-story town hall and library. Once it had been a school where her grandmother taught, and Brandy played on the swings when she visited. They passed the rustic Micanopy museum then neared the two-block downtown that comprised Micanopy.

“My mother walked right along here,” Hope added. “It was about three-quarters of a mile from the hotel.”

The boulevard had widened to four lanes. Brandy looked across the grassy median at the uneven row of nineteenth century brick and stucco buildings. Tourists in shorts, T-shirts, and sunglasses strolled along the sidewalk, passing in and out of the antique shops and bookstores. It looked much the same in the days when Brandy’s grandfather or grandmother had taken her into town for ice cream. Hope nodded toward a one-story building with mullion windows. “My mother went into the dry goods store. It was located here then. Caleb Stark Sr. owned it. He testified she came in and asked if she could find work. He didn’t promise anything, and she didn’t give her full name, worse luck. He said she used the telephone before she left. He had a wall phone with a crank that customers could borrow. Not too many folks in town had phones yet, of course, but we never knew the person she called. The woman at the central exchange didn’t remember the call. Whoever it was, wasn’t talking.”

“Who else saw her?”

“The town marshall. Briefly, he said. A minister at the Smith Street Baptist Church noticed her walk by. That was about two hours later.”

Brandy jotted a few more notes. She’d heard the story before, of course, but it never hurt to take a fresh look now that she planned to investigate. “The town’s never had more than seven hundred people. Looks like the marshall would remember someone new.”

Her grandmother scowled. “I agree.” She pulled into a diagonal parking space before a sidewalk shielded from the sun by a flat overhang. A pharmacy sign hung above the sprawling store. “My mother walked into this very building.” Hope backed the pickup away from the curb. “I cut some glads before you came, and I’d like to put them by the grave. We can go right past the Smith Street pond on the way to the cemetery. You might like to see it again.” Brandy nodded.

“After that, you’ll want to take another look at the few things your great-grandmother left behind.” She cast another searching glance at her granddaughter. “The sheriff’s office didn’t find them helpful. I have more faith in your intuition, and that’s a fact.”

Brandy sighed to herself. A tall order, Grandmother. She couldn’t depend on her intuition, although sometimes she did have feelings she couldn’t explain. In the Tavares case she’d felt so close to a dead woman that she really thought she saw her. John blamed an over-active imagination. Then there was the strange, globular light near the Suwanee River and Cedar Key—others saw it, too. That light had helped her. In Homosassa she felt in tune with long ago Seminoles—even the settlers they preyed on. Brandy shivered. But she couldn’t summon intuition. It wasn’t like ringing a buzzer for a maid.

When they reached the end of Cholokka Boulevard, Hope mashed down on the accelerator and whipped around a corner to the right, past a tall Queen Anne house with a circular turret. Hope took Brandy there once when she was five. She’d disgraced herself by spitting watermelon seeds on the polished floor. Brandy hoped different people lived there now.

Hope rounded another curve, stopped in a narrow road, and cut the engine. Farther down the block, Brandy could see the church with its towering steeple surrounded by a white picket fence.

“The pond’s down there,” Hope said. She gazed to the left. “This month there’s water in it. When the weather’s dry, there isn’t.” Her eyes softened again. The small pond was coated with green scum, its edges choked by weeds and grasses. Turkey oaks shaded the dark water.

“It doesn’t look large enough for anyone to drown in.”

“Of course, it doesn’t. Would you pick that place to kill yourself?” Hope gunned the engine and headed down Smith Street toward the cemetery.

A few minutes later they passed between the pillars. A sign read Micanopy Historic Cemetery, Est. 1826.” On each side of the road headstones stood in untidy rows for several acres, some barely thrusting above the brown grass, others tall and well cared for, some discolored with age and moss-grown. A few in a newer section gleamed white, their bases decked with artificial flowers. The only fresh blossoms lay withering on graves. Overhead, thin bands of sunlight drifted down through the branches of oaks. The first scent of autumn hung in the air.

Brandy’s grandmother parked the pickup and both women stepped out into the hushed grounds. Hope retrieved the yellow and red gladiolas from the back of the truck.

Brandy frowned. “Should you be walking on this uneven ground after your operation?”

“Lord a’ mercy, I’m fine,” Hope snapped. “Still strong as an ox.”

Brandy knew better than to argue with her grandmother, but she knew Hope had trouble with arthritis in her joints and spine. She’d had a knee replacement two months ago. At least Brandy would be with her if she stumbled or fell.