To Live and Die In Dixie (9 page)

“I've got to go,” I said. “If I stay out here and talk about this any more, we'll end up having a fight, and I don't have the energy right now. I'll talk to you later.”

I turned and walked back to the house. He stood by the car for a few seconds, then got in and started the engine. I let the front door slam behind me when I went back in the house.

I
NSTEAD OF SLEEPING THE SLEEP of the righteous, I tossed and turned a good part of the night, worrying about my argument with Mac. It was useless to fret about Edna's meddling. And I'd been unfair to accuse him of conspiring with her. But I'd had a long day, and on the best of days I have a short fuse. In between worrying about my love life, I assembled and reassembled what I knew about the burglary and murder at Eagle's Keep, turning facts and snippets of conversation that way and this, trying to make the pieces into something whole.

Problem was, I didn't have enough pieces. It was too early.

By six, I was exhausted with the effort of trying to sleep. I pulled on a robe, went into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee.

The House Mouse appointment book was lying out on the table where Edna had left it for me. This would be a typical Monday, jammed with more jobs than we could handle with everybody, including myself and Edna, pitching in to clean. Plus I'd agreed we would finish up the cleaning at Eagle's Keep.

I left a message on C. W. Hunsecker's answering machine, telling him I'd meet him at Harold's Barbecue at eleven thirty
A.M.
If you don't get to Harold's early on Civitans day, you don't get a table.

I was still muttering to myself when Edna dragged herself into the kitchen.

“What's with you?” she asked.

“I've juggled jobs around so we can send Neva Jean and Ruby back to Littlefield's house today,” I told her. “Everything's written down. I'll be back by early afternoon—I hope.”

She was reading the front page of the paper, and gave me a silent good-bye wave.

For once things went smoothly at the wholesale house and I was right on time when I pulled into the restaurant parking lot.

Like all great barbecue joints, Harold's looks like a potential health hazard. The place sits in the shadow of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, so at any one time there are enough cops inside to put down a good-size riot or a small-size revolution. Hunsecker was holding down a booth by the window.

As soon as I was seated a waitress appeared with a pitcher of sweet tea and a menu. I took a sip of tea and waved the menu away. “Just bring me a pork plate. And if you could, an outside cut of the crackling cornbread.”

Hunsecker sipped his own tea. I waited.

“So you're working for Elliot Littlefield,” he said finally.

I'd figured this might be the reason for the invitation to lunch.

“Yeah.”

He took another sip. “You sure you wanna do this?”

“Look, C. W.,” I said, feeling my face get hot. “I'm
just trying to help him trace and recover his stolen property. That's all. You know me. I wouldn't get involved in an active murder investigation.”

“I know you, all right,” he said. “That's why we're having lunch today. So I can tell you to stay clear of this guy. He's a murderer, Callahan. Why you want to take money from a scumbag like him?”

Sometimes it's a struggle to keep my temper under control. Especially when somebody tries to tell me who I should or should not work for. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of how far back C. W. Hunsecker and I go.

“He didn't kill her, C. W.” I said.

“Oh, you already solved a murder only two days old,” he said, mockingly. “Give this girl a gold badge.”

The waitress was back then, setting two green plastic plates of barbecue in front of us. She fussed over Hunsecker for a moment, then hurried away.

“All right, smart ass,” I said, squirting a stream of barbecue sauce, the mild kind, on my sliced pork. “Where's the motive? Even for the burglary? The most valuable thing taken, a diary, wasn't insured. Littlefield stood to make a shitload of money on that diary, not to mention the prestige of discovering such a big deal historical document. You know Littlefield's ego, he probably liked the idea of the Elliot Littlefield diary more than he did the money he was going to earn. Besides, he genuinely liked this kid.”

Hunsecker stopped chewing on a rib for a minute. “Liked to get in her pants is more like it.”

“I think it was a nonsexual relationship. She was involved with somebody else. Tell you what. You find out who her lover was, I'll bet that's the killer.”

He mopped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Thanks for the advice. You're wrong.”

I pushed a piece of pork around in the sauce. “Give me the Sunny Girl case file.”

“That case is over and done with. Why you wanna mess in a twenty-year-old murder?”

“I just do,” I said stubbornly. “Are you going to give me the files or not?”

“I don't have them.”

“Who does?”

“Beats me,” he said. “Few years ago we cleaned out all the old homicide files and shipped them to some warehouse space the city made out of an old elementary school over near Cabbagetown. Haven't seen any of those old files since.”

“Damn.” I sighed, absentmindedly dipping a piece of crackling cornbread in my bowl of Brunswick stew. Maybe I should let up on Hunsecker about the Littlefield thing. We clearly weren't going to agree on my client's guilt or innocence.

“So how are Vonette and the kids?”

Hunsecker squirmed in his chair. “Not too good. Vonette and I are, uh, separated. Things are pretty bad right now. She and the kids moved out. Ain't none of 'em speaking to me. Before she left, she took a knife and slashed holes in the crotch of every single pair of pants I own. Had to get a credit union loan just to buy clothes to wear to work.”

Hunsecker's eyes stayed glued to his plate, which he'd wiped clean of the last vestiges of barbecue. I could see a quarter-size bald spot on the top of his head.

He still wouldn't look me in the eyes. I smelled guilt.

“Sounds like Vonette had herself a royal hissy fit,” I observed. “Would all of this have anything to do with your new partner, Linda Nickells? Just how old is she, anyway? About the same age as your daughter Kenyatta?”

He was still examining his plate for any further traces of food. “You're too goddamn smart, you know that? Know too damn much for your own damn good.”

“She's what, twenty-two?” I persisted.

“Twenty-six,” he admitted defiantly. “Kenyatta's not but nineteen, not that it's any of your business.”

I raised my hands to signal a truce. “You're right. What you do with your marriage and your life is none of my business. Just like who I choose to work for is none of your business. Now. What I need is some information about fences, people who deal in stolen historic documents. Can you help me or not?”

Hunsecker pushed his chair back, stood, and pulled a silver money clip from his pocket, peeling off a five and a ten and dropping it on the table.

He was embarrassed and he was mad. I'd done it again. Pushed things too far. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. “Go to hell, Garrity,” he said. “Your client's a murderer. He's going to prison, and this time, he's gonna stay.”

T
HE HIGH-PITCHED WHINE of our heavy-duty Electrolux coming from inside Eagle's Keep put a smile on my face. If the girls were at the point of vacuuming, they must be close to being finished. Which meant we were close to being paid.

I knew the vacuum would drown out the sound of the doorbell, so I walked around to the carriage house to see if Littlefield might be working in his shop.

He was seated at a desk with his back to me when I knocked on the door. Littlefield swiveled around in his chair. He was on the phone, but gestured for me to come in.

The antiques shop smelled of lemon and beeswax. There was none of the mustiness of the house.

“Fax me that catalog, will you?” Littlefield was saying. “Good. I'll talk to you soon.”

He hung up the phone and motioned for me to be seated in a leather armchair facing the desk.

“How's the back?” I asked. He had some kind of wedge-shaped pillow he was sitting on. There were large bags under his eyes and his color was still pale.

“Dandy,” he said sarcastically. “I've had it x-rayed this
morning, and they tell me it's nothing surgery and six months flat on my back won't take care of. But what about you? Have you any ideas on how to track down my diary?”

“I thought you might be at Bridget's funeral,” I blurted out.

He frowned. “Under the circumstances I decided it would be best to stay away. I've made a donation to the Humane Society in her name. That damned Siamese was hers. I had forbidden her to bring it into the house, but she sneaked it in anyway while she was sleeping on the third floor. She said the cat couldn't sleep without her. Now. About the diary?”

“Right,” I said briskly. “I'd like to have the names of the people who'd expressed an interest in buying it. In fact, I need the names of everyone you'd approached to sell the diary.”

He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a manila file folder. Extracting a piece of paper from it, he handed it over to me. There were three names typed neatly with addresses and phone numbers below.

“These were the only three I approached directly,” he said. “But news of a find like this travels rapidly through the marketplace. There were probably dozens of people, all over the country, who'd heard about the diary and were drooling over the possibility of acquiring it.”

“So you're telling me you have no way of knowing how many people might have known about the diary's existence?”

“Correct.”

I read over the list. There were two institutions, Emory University and the University of Georgia, listed. And one individual, someone named Stephen Blakeford. “Who's this guy?”

“Speedy Blakeford? He's in oil and gas in Houston. I'd never heard of him until his lawyer called and asked me to send a photograph and description of the diary. It turns out that Mr. Blakeford is something of a speculator. He buys things, the rarer the better, holds onto them for a short while, then sells them again, usually to the Japanese. At an enormous profit.”

“And Emory University and UGA were competing for the diary too?” I was surprised that a state institution, especially one more noted for football than its library, had the means or the interest to buy something as rare as Lula Belle Bird's diary, and I said so.

“You're wrong,” Littlefield said. “The university actually has a decent special collection. They have the Margaret Mitchell papers, of course, and quite a few other things.”

“And they can compete with all that Coke money at Emory?”

“Probably not.” There was that smile again. “That bid you saw was the first one I'd received. I will say that Peter Thornton, Georgia's new director, is young and ambitious for the collection. And he's well connected.”

“So that leaves us Emory University,” I said. “I find it hard to believe anyone there would have to resort to murder and theft just to pick up some moldy old diary.”

The smile disappeared. “I hope you're being facetious. That diary is in excellent condition. As for someone at Emory being capable of this kind of crime, I'd have to agree.”

I traced the names on the list with my finger. “Did it look like Emory might be able to compete with Blakeford?”

“The last conversation I had with Shane Dunstan at Emory led me to believe that they were definitely in the running.”

“Did he mention a price?”

“She,” Littlefield said. “Shane is a woman. We discussed the fact that she'd been in contact with a donor who was considering putting up the funding to buy the diary. We haven't talked since before Bridget, uh, the other night. As you can understand, I'd prefer for people not to know about the burglary. Discretion is a very large part of what I do here.”

My eyes traveled around the shop. It had a burglar alarm and looked secure, but I was still surprised there hadn't been an attempt to break in here, too. “Have any of these people ever been here in the shop, or in your home?”

He frowned. “Peter Thornton and Shane Dunstan have been in the shop. I showed them the diary here. And they've been in the house, too, for parties and other functions for the Society for Southern Historians. Speedy Blakeford, I've never met.”

Littlefield seemed irritated by my questions about the diary's prospective buyers. Fine. I was getting irritated by his answers.

“Let me ask you something, Mr. Littlefield. Who do you think did this? And why?”

He was fidgeting with something on his desktop. It was a small beautifully formed silver dagger with engraving on the handle. He turned it over and over, running long slender fingers over the blade. At this rate he'd wear the silver plate right off the thing.

Littlefield looked up angrily. “Obviously it's someone who knows me. Who wants to ruin my business and implicate me in another murder. Someone who knows enough about my business to know what an incredible find the diary is, and how important it is to me.”

So. Littlefield had paranoid tendencies.

“Well,” I said patiently. “Who might that be?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “It's crazy, yet, he hates me so passionately I believe he just might have done it. He just might have.”

“Who?” I asked.

Littlefield got up from his chair awkwardly, holding himself stiffly. He walked haltingly to the shop window and stood there, looking out. When he turned to face me his face was contorted in rage.

“It's that fucking Jew,” he spat. “Dahlberg.”

I listened silently while Littlefield recited chapter and verse of Dahlberg's campaign to run him, Elliot Littlefield, the man who'd rescued Inman Park, out of his own neighborhood. Dahlberg was always running to the city, complaining about parking violations at Eagle's Keep. Lately he'd complained about code violations at several small rental properties Littlefield owned at the edge of Inman Park. “He wants to harass me so much that I'll sell my houses to his little nigger-lovers' club,” he raged.

“What?” I said. I'd only been half-listening to Littlefield's tirade.

“It's true,” he insisted. “Dahlberg and his liberal pals want to turn Inman Park back into a slum again. Those houses of mine, I picked them up for back taxes. When I'm done renovating them, they'll sell for one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand each. But Dahlberg wants to buy them now, for nothing, through his phony foundation. Then he'll turn around and give them to homeless bums and winos on the condition that they fix them up themselves. It'd be the death of this neighborhood.”

Sounded to me like a great solution to the city's homeless problem, but I didn't share that opinion with my client.

“And you believe Dahlberg murdered Bridget and burglarized your house because of that?” I said, trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice.

“You've got to prove it,” he said, turning toward me. “Dahlberg's behind this. He's got my diary over there.”

He clumped back to his chair and sank down slowly.

I was at a loss for words.

“I'll do what I can,” I mumbled.

After writing me a check for $1,000 for the cleaning and another $750 as an advance for my investigative work, Littlefield picked up a file folder on his desk. “Let me know when you find something, will you?” he said politely. The rage had disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Neva Jean and Ruby were slumped against the side of the van when I got to the street. They'd loaded their cleaning gear in the van already, but were avoiding getting into the ovenlike interior.

Neva Jean started to complain about how hard she and Ruby had to work to clean up Eagle's Keep, but I shut her down fast.

“You got us into this deal, Neva Jean,” I said. “Right into the middle of a homicide. So I don't want to hear one damn word out of your mouth. Understand?”

She rolled her eyes, but after that she sipped her Mountain Dew in silence. Ruby hummed gospel songs on the way back home.