MacPherson's Lament

CHAPTER 9

THE FASTEST WAY to Georgia is Interstate 95, which is an extremely boring road-a more or less straight line of asphalt running down the coastal plain, hemmed in by an endless stretch of pine barrens and sandy soil. There is nothing in the way of scenery to keep you alert unless your reading taste runs to garish billboards or lists of fast-food joints at forthcoming exit ramps. I figured that the drive from southeast Virginia to southeast Georgia would be six hours of unbroken monotony, but much as I dreaded it, I will admit that there are routes I am even more reluctant to travel, roads that are anything but boring. These roads are mostly north of Danville.

I have an old school friend who lives in western Maryland, and the drive up I-81 to her house is always an anxious journey for me. To get to Frederick, I must pass through the heartland of the War. First comes Lexington, where Stonewall Jackson taught artillery at Virginia Military Institute before he went forth in 1861 to practice it. An hour or so north is New Market, where the young boys of VMI still in their school uniforms went up against the Union Army and were butchered. Just seeing the road sign NEW MARKET makes me uneasy, and I picture schoolboys dying in the long grass of the valley. Farther up are exits for Charles Town, West Virginia, which means horse racing to most people nowadays, but to me, it conjures up an image of John Brown, waiting for the rope to be placed around his neck and predicting the coming war with his dying words. I-81 is a modern four-lane highway, but it follows the old route along the valley, where the armies traveled under Sheridan and Jackson, and I feel their presence, even over the roar of the eighteen-wheelers whizzing past me.

Near the Maryland border I cross Antietam Creek, and the chills start. Antietam… I know that there are streets in Maryland named that now, probably grade schools and dry cleaners even. But to me Antietam is bodies piled in a roadway, one on top of the other, making a mound twelve feet high, stretching on and on through the dust of that winding road. It is the stench of powder and blood and death that can’t still linger after a hundred years and more, but still I smell it.

They are just words on road signs, that’s all, I tell myself. And between Norfolk and Richmond, on I-64, is an exit sign for Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor… The swampy terrain made it almost impossible to attack the well-entrenched Confederate Army. To charge in such a marsh against the enemy’s guns was suicide, and the Union soldiers knew it. Cold Harbor. On the shirts of their uniforms, they pinned pieces of paper bearing their names and their hometowns. That way when their bodies were pulled out of the swamp, they could be sent home for burial. One soldier wrote: June 3, 1864. I was killed.

I go out of my way not to drive past Cold Harbor.

In the South we haven’t really forgotten the War. Many of us knew people who knew people who fought in it. It hasn’t quite passed into history yet. It’s still more feelings than facts, and likely to remain so for a good while. I know this because I’ve been with my Scottish husband to an older battlefield-Culloden Moor, west of Inverness-and watched his face grow pale and solemn as he looked at the field where his kinsmen died. On that field, the Scots met death, defeat, and the end of their country as an independent nation. That was 1746, and it still stirs them, so I figure we have a ways to go before the emotion fades away, before words like Antietam and Cold Harbor pass without raising chills and dark memories.

I hadn’t thought about the War in a long time. It was Bill and his damned Confederate ladies who brought it all back. Even on I-95, where the most ominous sign is an ad for Gatorland, the gray ghosts rode along, making me remember them. In Virginia, the Civil War isn’t something you learn in school; it’s a Presence. Always there. I can remember an ancient great-aunt telling Bill and me about our great-great-grandfather David MacPherson, a sixteen-year-old private in the 68th Infantry under General Bragg. In 1865 the 68th had marched from Virginia to Fort Fisher in the snow, he’d told her. They had no shoes by that time, just shreds of leather or rags wrapped around cracked and callused feet. It was winter and they followed the railroad tracks south. They left bloody footprints in the snow.

That’s the war to me: a starving sixteen-year-old leaving footprints in the snow in his own blood. And the women I was tracking were the daughters of those young soldiers-the last link with them. So what was I supposed to do? Coax those old ladies into a nursing home so the state could take their house?

I wished there was something to look at on I-95 besides a million damned pine trees. I didn’t want to have to think anymore.

A month in a county jail had not improved Tug Mosier in any way. The lack of sunlight and starchy jail food had made him even paler and more flabby. His hair shone with grease, and a stubble of beard completed a look that would have made a jury convict him on general principles. He looked guilty of something. A. P. Hill managed to smile at her scruffy client, hoping that she looked more confident than she felt. At least she had a shred of a defense now.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“I hate being cooped up,” said Tug. “Specially in summertime. And I sure as hell could use a drink.”

“I can’t help you there, but I do have some news about your case. First of all, I just had a meeting with the district attorney. He has offered you a deal, which is really beside the point because I have a new lead that may win this case for us.”

“The D.A. is talking a deal?” The scowl left Tug’s face and he leaned forward with the first sign of genuine interest he had shown since she arrived.

“Yes. He wants you to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He says he’ll ask for a ten-year sentence.”

“Yeah, but you don’t serve all the time they give you.”

“Well, you could, of course, if you tried to escape or didn’t behave. But usually a prison term is about a quarter of the sentence. Say two and a half years. That’s a long time to be behind bars, I’m sure. But listen: I have great news. I had a forensic expert study the autopsy report on Misti and she came up with a wonderful piece of evidence to help our case.”

Powell’s voice bubbled with enthusiasm as she explained Elizabeth’s theory about the absence of petechial hemorrhaging in Misti Hale. She had to repeat the part about low blood pressure-and still Tug looked unimpressed. “You see,” she said triumphantly, “if she died of shock, you didn’t kill her intentionally!”

Tug Mosier frowned and rubbed his stubble of beard. “You think a Patrick County jury is going to follow that?” he asked.

“I’ll call in a medical expert,” A.P. assured him. “We’ll go over the whole process. Maybe even have a chart to help the jurors focus on the technical part.”

“But if we do that, the district attorney won’t be going for second degree, will he? He’ll try to convict me of first-degree homicide. Maybe capital murder. They fry people in this state, you know.”

“We’d argue that Misti’s death was accidental.”

“That’s just it,” said Tug sadly. “We’d argue. But you can lose an argument. You can’t lose a negotiated deal. I don’t want to bet my life that this jury will understand a word you’re saying. I didn’t, much.”

A.P. looked down at her briefcase full of notes, the result of hours of work researching the case. Then she looked at Tug Mosier, stone-faced and flabby, with the stirrings of fear in his eyes. “You want to plead guilty, then?” she asked. “Accept the D.A.’s offer?”

“I reckon so,” said Tug. “It seems the best way. I can do two and a half years, no sweat. I got friends inside. And-no offense, ma’am-but this is pretty damn near your first case. I’m not anxious to risk my life on the skills of a baby lawyer. Really: no offense.”

“None taken,” murmured A. P. Hill. “I’ll go back and tell Mr. Hazelit that we’ll accept his offer.”

Her client settled back in his straight wooden chair with a happy smile. “I sure am glad you’re taking this so well, ma’am. I do hate a woman that argues and nags at a fellow. Misti was always a one for that. She used to bitch and moan till I’d itch to slam her through a wall. Anything to shut up that mouth of hers.”

A. P. Hill studied Tug Mosier’s close-set blue eyes and his expressionless face as he reminisced about his dead lover without a trace of sorrow or regret. “You did it, didn’t you?” she whispered.

“Yeah. Reckon I can own up now.”

“But why did you agree to the regression technique?”

“Well, I don’t really believe in hypnosis and all,” said Tug. “Figured if you’re strong enough, you can fight it. I thought I’d say I didn’t do it and then the doc would testify that I was innocent. Didn’t work like that. It scared hell out of me when I came to and you said I’d been talking about Red Dowdy.”

“Why? He was there, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. He saw the whole thing. The next day he told me what I did-but I didn’t believe him. I had sorta forgot about her being in the trunk.”

“But maybe he’s lying!” said A.P. eagerly. “Red would hardly admit to you that he had committed murder.”

“Why not? He’s always been straight with me before, about owning up to things. When we robbed that hiker at Hanging Rock, he-” Tug saw her eyes widen. He smiled a little and looked away. “Don’t reckon you want to hear about that, ma’am.”

She shivered, pondering how the case might have gone in court. She saw herself grandstanding in her best baby-lawyer tradition. Then she envisioned the slow-talking old D.A. getting up in his shiny blue suit and blowing her away without so much as raising his voice. “So there was a witness who could have testified that you were guilty. Do you remember what happened?”

He frowned with the effort of concentration. “I sort of remember her yelling and me trying to make her quit. But it was no more than second degree, honest. I just felt like shutting her up, and I was too drunk to care about the consequences. So if I can cut a deal for second degree, I’ll take it.”

“I’ll go tell the district attorney,” whispered A. P. Hill, fighting an impulse to run from the room.

“Yeah, tell him it’s a deal,” said Tug Mosier. “I can do two and a half, Miz Hill. Misti was worth that.”

Jekyll Island is now attached to the mainland of Georgia by an umbilical cord of highway, a manmade isthmus constructed of dirt dredged from the adjoining sound. I didn’t think the old ladies would be too hard to find. The island is only a couple of miles long and less than a mile wide. A tollbooth at the end of the ribbon of road charges a small fee for every car coming onto Jekyll.

I got there about ten in the morning after spending a restless night in Savannah. I called Bill to make sure he hadn’t been taken into custody-or jumped off a bridge. He sounded despondent (which showed a good grasp of reality, I thought), but at least things weren’t any worse than when I left. I told Bill to give me a couple of days to straighten things out. I also asked him to invite our parents to dinner at his apartment on Saturday night. I didn’t know whether we would be able to straighten them out, but I intended to try. I needed Bill for moral support-and to pitch in with whatever persuasive skills he had managed to glean from law school.

The matter at hand depended on luck-after all, the old ladies might not be on this island at all-but beyond that I didn’t foresee too many difficulties. Southern charm and grad student persistence ought to get me through this on my own. At the tollbooth I asked the attendant if he remembered a car full of elderly ladies coming on to the island. He said that he’d be hard-pressed to remember anything else. Apparently the temperate south Georgia islands are a great favorite of the over-sixty set.

Trying not to envision a house-to-house inquiry, I drove on, taking the road that encircles the island and getting the general lay of the land. The business district-one row of shops and a post office-was easy enough to find. I decided to complete the circuit of the island and then to center my search on this hundred yards of island. A postmaster could tell me if a new post office box had been rented; the Realtor would know if a gaggle of old ladies had been house hunting; and sooner or later they would have to turn up at the little grocery store or the restaurant across the road. I had one advantage, that of surprise. They didn’t know that anyone had come looking for them, although I was certain that they were shrewd enough to be cautious anyway. I would be, if I were absconding with more than a million dollars.

On the side of the island facing the mainland, I found a historical marker that confirmed my guess about this being the old ladies’ destination. I parked the car off the side of the road under a tree and went up to read the marker. According to the sign, Jekyll Island had been the site of Confederate battery positions in 1861, equipped with a 42-pound gun and 32-pound navy guns. The artillery, anchored into earthworks of palmetto logs, timber, sandbags, and railroad cross ties, had been placed there for the protection of Brunswick; but on February 10, 1862, the fortifications had been dismantled, and the guns were sent to Savannah-by a Major Edward Anderson. Apparently the runaway ladies had been reading up on their chosen hideaway.

I was climbing back into the car to head for the tiny business district when a car full of elderly women weaved past me. The silver-haired driver seemed inclined to take her half of the road out of the middle, so I resolved to let them get a good head start before I ventured out on the road. As I watched them go by, though, I realized that the white Chrysler had a Virginia license plate. Mrs. Jeb Stuart rides again, I thought, and gunned my car to pursue the fugitives. They were headed north, to the undeveloped marshland part of the island, a haunt of bird-watchers and seascape artists. It wasn’t going to be much of a chase, because you can circle Jekyll in twenty minutes if traffic permits.

They pulled off into the sand and piled out of the car. I parked across the road, then strolled over, trying not to look threatening. There were five of them-all well past seventy, I judged-and they were wearing the sort of crepe old-lady dresses that one usually sees at tea parties, not on beach excursions. They paid no attention to me because they were arguing among themselves and trying to haul something out of the trunk of the Chrysler.

“Can I help you ladies?” I said, grateful for an excuse to strike up a conversation.

One of them glared at me suspiciously, but a sweet-faced Helen Hayes type smiled prettily and said that they’d be ever so grateful if I could hoist that old piece of machinery out of the cavernous trunk of their automobile. I peered in to see what was giving them problems, trying not to think about that scene in The Great Escape when the Germans pull machine guns out of the truck and mow down the prisoners. These absconding felons looked harmless enough.

“What is this?” I asked between gasps as I hauled a vacuum-cleaner-sized machine out of the trunk.

They looked at each other with worried frowns.

“It’s a vacuum cleaner,” said the tall, suspicious one.

“We have sand in the backseat of our car,” said a short one in a black dress.

Like hell it was a vacuum cleaner. It was a metal detector. In college I’d had a boyfriend who used one to look for Civil War bullets at battlefields. I decided, though, that it would be detrimental to this budding relationship to call the old swindlers liars at this stage. It was obvious, though, that they were anxiously awaiting my departure, and I realized that between airline schedules and Virginia grand juries, I really didn’t have time to worm my way into their confidence through days of charm and patience. I decided to come straight to the point, a maneuver practically unheard of in Southern circles, but occasionally necessary.

“Which one of you is Flora Dabney?” I asked.

They all gasped, and the sweet-looking one turned to the suspicious one and said, “Don’t tell her anything, Flora!” which pretty much settled the identity question right then and there. After an awkward pause, Flora introduced me to her cohorts: Mary Lee Pendleton, Lydia Bridgeford, Dolly Hawks Smith, and Ellen Morrison.

“Where are the others?”

“Back at the inn,” said Dolly Smith. “Two of them are invalids. Are you a police officer?”

“I’m Elizabeth MacPherson,” I said. “My brother is that naive young attorney who sold your house for you in Danville.”

“Such a nice boy,” one of them murmured. “He’s well, I trust?”

“He’s about to be disbarred. Or worse. The buyer of your house just discovered that the state of Virginia had claimed it. So he wants his money back, and everyone thinks Bill has it.”

“I can’t imagine how you found us,” murmured Mary Lee Pendleton, twisting her string of pearls. “We really worked hard on our getaway plans.”

“Until you went and blabbed to that young man in uniform at Stone Mountain,” said Lydia Bridgeford. “You always were a fool for a handsome man, Mary Lee!”

I motioned to a picnic table set back under the trees. “Let’s talk about this,” I said. “I need to know exactly what’s going on, and I hope I can persuade you to return to Virginia with me.”

Flora Dabney shook her head. “We’re not going to become prisoners of the state. They’ve taken our house, haven’t they?”

“Yes. And they’re about to charge my brother with murdering you.” They listened thoughtfully while I explained that no one but Bill had ever seen them, and that there was no proof they were still alive.

“I didn’t want to leave a paper trail,” said Dolly Smith. “I understand that’s very important in the fugitive business. Perhaps I overdid it a bit.”

“Your brother is a very nice young man,” Ellen Morrison ventured. “I wouldn’t want him to get into trouble on our account.”

“So you didn’t plan this to incriminate Bill?”

Flora Dabney shook her head. “No. The fact that he was so trusting was helpful, of course, but we couldn’t have counted on it. You see, we received a notice that the state wanted to take over the Phillips Mansion as a historic building, and that we were to be sent to a nursing home.”

“We had to do something!” said Ellen Morrison with a quaver in her voice.

Lydia Bridgeford patted her hair. “I decided to see if there was something we could do. I spend a lot of time at the courthouse doing my genealogical researches-”

“She’s almost back to Noah,” muttered Dolly Smith.

“So I asked Bonnie-she’s the clerk, such a sweet girl-”

“Although perhaps too trusting for a public official,” murmured Flora.

“Just Bill’s type,” I said.

“Well, I watched Bonnie for a while and I learned how things work at the courthouse. All the paperwork goes to Bonnie’s desk. When she gets time, she enters the information in the record book by hand and she types it into the computer records. Well, I got to thinking about this, and I realized that if the piece of paper disappeared from Bonnie’s desk before she entered the information, no one would ever know! I kept going to the courthouse, doing my historical searches, and when Bonnie left for lunch, I’d check through her paperwork. Sure enough, one day the notice of-what was it?”

“Eminent domain,” said Dolly Smith.

“So you took the paper before it could be filed anywhere?” I asked. “That means that Bill did the title search correctly. He didn’t find any lien on the property because there wasn’t one to be found.”

“Oh, yes. We knew that any lawyer would balk if he found a lien,” Mary Lee Pendleton explained. “But we knew we’d have to work fast, before the state did anything else.”

“The newspaper ad was my idea,” said Flora Dabney. “And I said we’d have to get cash on the barrel head.”

“Yes, dear, but the Cayman Islands was my suggestion,” said Mary Lee. “You know I asked that kind gentleman banker-”

“But why did you have Bill run the ad and show the house and sign the deed?”

“We didn’t want too many people to see us,” said Ellen Morrison. “In case they decided to come after us. We didn’t want to be caught.”

“And now we are,” sighed Dolly Smith.

“Rubbish!” said Flora Dabney. “This young lady can’t make us go back. She’s not a policeman.”

“I don’t want my brother to go to jail,” I said. “But I don’t want to see you all go to a nursing home either-if you don’t want to.”

“Perhaps we could send back some sort of proof that we’re still alive-and that Bill is not to blame,” Flora said. “Just don’t expect us to go back.”

“Couldn’t you get people to support your cause?” I asked. “Surely the Sons of Confederate Veterans, or perhaps some state politicians-”

Dolly Smith shrugged. “People are afraid of the Confederacy these days. Too many people linked the battle flag with racism, and no one in government wants his name linked with our cause.”

“You’re politically incorrect,” I said.

“I suppose so,” sighed Flora. “People do want history to be simple. It is inconvenient to remember that the Southern soldiers used to infuriate the Union ones by calling them abolitionists. Most Yankees deemed it a great insult. They thought they were fighting to preserve the union, just as we assumed that we were fighting for independence. Now, of course, it is more pleasant for people to think otherwise. People do like there to be heroes in their histories.”

“My father, Thomas Bridgeford, was a hero,” said Lydia stoutly. “He was a great Southern gentleman. Of course, he lost all his money after the crash of ’29. He was quite old then, of course, and I’ve never blamed him.”

“Which brings us to this,” said Dolly Smith, tapping the metal detector. “I suppose we can tell you about it now. We might need your help.”

“Help for what?” I asked. I hoped they weren’t looking for World War II land mines to carry on the rebellion.

Flora Dabney smiled and patted my arm. “We’re trying to locate the Confederate treasury, dear.”

Edith stood in the doorway surveying her employer with a worried frown. “You look like the fellow for whom Dismal Swamp was named.”

Bill rubbed his eyes and groaned. “Is it too late to consider a career in real estate?”

“Seems like that’s what caused your problem in the first place,” Edith replied.

“My sister says that I’m too trusting.”

Edith considered this statement. “Well,” she said. “I don’t think this would have happened if A. P. Hill had been here. Maybe you just need to be a little more conservative from now on.”

“If there is a now on. If my sister doesn’t find Flora and her cohorts, I could be retaining Powell as my defense attorney.”

If Edith had a soothing reply to this outburst of self-pity, it was forestalled by the appearance of A. P. Hill herself, briefcase in hand, looking as grimly determined as usual. She wore her no-nonsense blue suit, and her blond hair was newly cropped into the unglamorous style she favored to offset her prettiness. Bill resisted the urge to crawl under his desk in the face of such ruthless efficiency.

“Hello,” she said. “My case is finished. We plea-bargained.” She took in the bleak expressions on the faces of her listeners. “What are y’all looking so glum about? I’m the one who lost the chance of a great trial.”

Bill and Edith looked at each other, avoiding A. P. Hill’s searching gaze.

“What’s wrong? Did Mr. Trowbridge finally stump you with a question?”

“Tell her,” said Edith. “I just remembered we need some more manila folders. I’ll run out and get some. It’s almost lunchtime anyhow.” It was ten-fifteen. She snatched up her purse and hurried out the door before anyone could reply.

A. P. Hill set down her briefcase and perched on the edge of Bill’s desk. “Tell me what?” she said with a puzzled frown.

“I had a few problems while you were gone,” said Bill. “First of all, I was handling my mother’s divorce. You knew about that? Well, my mother fired me. Claims I wasn’t devoting enough time to her case.”

“Just as well,” said Powell. “It’s best not to represent family and you probably wouldn’t have charged her, so it isn’t a financial loss. I guess it hurt your feelings though.”

“It might have,” said Bill, “except that I had other matters on my mind. Mr. Trowbridge called this morning. He’s canceling the rest of the yearly retainer for stupid questions. He says he’s decided to take law courses at night at the local community college. He claims that my sister suggested it.”

“That is a financial loss,” murmured A. P. Hill. “I wonder if we can sue her.”

“There’s one other concern,” said Bill. He explained about the simple real estate transaction, the power of attorney, and the Cayman Islands wire transfer while his partner’s expression changed from polite bewilderment to apprehension and finally to utter dismay. “And so,” Bill concluded, “I have hopes that Elizabeth will find the Confederate daughters and save me from being charged with fraud and murder.”

“I see,” said A. P. Hill. She was several shades paler now. Her eyebrows seemed to have arched permanently in an expression of horror.

“They were really very kind,” Bill said.

“Except that they left you under suspicion of fraud and murder,” his partner pointed out.

“The million and a half worries me,” said Bill. “Will the state expect me to pay it back?”

“I hope not. We didn’t get insurance on the practice yet, did we?”

“No. We opted for filing cabinets instead. I could never hope to raise that much money, Powell. I have the seventy-five thousand dollars from the house sale commission, but that wouldn’t go far. Besides, I paid off my college loan with it and bought a car and the fax machine.”

A. P. Hill groaned. “You shouldn’t be let out alone,” she said. “You have to pay taxes on that, remember! Are those all the assets you have?”

“All my worldly goods,” said Bill. “Except for this.” He fished out his Confederate penny and held it up with a rueful smile.

“Let me see that,” said Powell, snatching the coin. “Where did you get this?”

“Miss Bridgeford gave it to me. For a lucky piece. You see. I told you those ladies were nice.”

“They were very kind. Look, can I hold on to this for a little while?”

“Don’t you think I need a lucky piece more than you do?” asked Bill.

“I promise to let you have the luck, partner. Right now I’d better go and talk to somebody about this little predicament of yours. We need to do something before you get indicted. I have our reputation to think of.”

“Who can you talk to?” asked Bill. “I was afraid to go to any of the old boys in town, because if they find out how badly I’ve screwed up, we’ll never get accepted by the legal eagles around here.”

“I don’t care for the thought myself,” said Powell Hill. “But I can’t see any way out of it. I’m going to see what I can do to clear up this mess. And then I suppose I’ll have to talk to Cousin Stinky.”

“Great!” groaned Bill. “Your cousin Stinky. You think a country lawyer from southwest Virginia can help me out? Where does Stinky practice? Martinsville?”

“Richmond. Cousin Stinky is the state’s attorney general.” A. P. Hill tossed the coin in the air and caught it. “Catch you later, partner.”