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Authors: Nancy Bell

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BOOK: Biggie and the Quincy Ghost
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T
he next morning when I came downstairs, I found Brian, dressed in sweatpants and no shirt, sprawled across a sofa reading a magazine.
I sat down near him and cleared my throat.
He looked up from his magazine. “Oh, hey, J.R.”
“I wasn’t buttin’ in,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You know, buttin’ in. What I said last night? About Sammy Knudson? It wasn’t any of my business.”
Brian grinned at me. “Hey, man. No big deal.” He went back to reading.
“You should have seen her rubbing up against that guy,” I said, glad that Brian seemed to be feeling a little better.
“Um, yeah.”
“She sure had me fooled.”
“Um-hmmm.”
“And you weren’t even a little bit surprised?”
Brian put down his magazine and looked straight at me. “Everybody knows about Emily,” he said. “All the kids, that is. That’s why nobody’ll have anything to do with her.”
“Those guys out at the bait shop sure didn’t feel that way.”
“Look, kid, guys, well, you know how guys are—they’ll, like, do anything they can—when nobody’s looking.”
“I’m never going to be that way.”
Brian looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, I’m not!”
“You’re young, hotshot. Wait a couple of years, then see what you’ll do.” He looked out the window with a serious look on his face. “Sometimes life gets complicated. Now, scram and let me read my magazine.”
Just then, Biggie came down the stairs with her big black handbag over her arm. “I’m going to the courthouse. I have several people to see, so I may not be back by lunchtime.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Hang out with Rosebud, I guess.”
“Fine,” Biggie said. “Just see you stay out of trouble.”
After Biggie left, I went out to the kitchen, where I found Mr. Masters sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee with Rosebud. Willie Mae was rolling out piecrusts at the counter.
“You mean to say you jumped into alligator-infested
waters to pull the boy out?” Mr. Masters shook his head. “My hat’s off to you. Not many men would have had the courage.”
Rosebud took out a red bandanna and blew his nose with a loud
honk
, then refolded the hankie and dabbed the end of his nose with it before putting it back in his pocket. “It wasn’t what you’d say exactly like that,” he said. “See, when that crazy kid commenced slapping that flat-bottom boat against the water, it made a awful racket that scared them ’gators so bad, they hightailed it out of there.”
“Wow,” I said. “You never told me that part.”
Rosebud ignored me and went on talking to Mr. Masters. “Wellsir, quick as a flash, I waded in and grabbed the boy here before they could come back.” He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and sniffed it. Willie Mae gave him a look. “I ain’t lightin’ it, sugar.” He grinned, showing his gold teeth. “Of course, they’d a been back, no question about that. All I done was, I taken my window of opportunity, as they say.”
I stood up and threw my arms around Rosebud’s neck. “Thanks!” I said.
“That there’s a mighty peculiar bunch of folks out there.” Rosebud was looking at Mr. Masters, who looked away.
“I say, they’s mighty peculiar.”
“I expect you’re right.” Mr. Masters looked at his watch. “Well, I’m off. I promised Mary Ann I’d help her hang some new curtains in the Sarah Bernhardt Room. Thanks for the coffee, Miss Willie Mae.”
I had an idea. “Hey, Rosebud,” I said. “Want to go take a carriage ride around town?”
“You got the ten bucks?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, then, I’m gonna take me a little nap. Rescuing folks takes it out of a feller.” With that, he got up and headed up the stairs.
I watched Willie Mae’s back as she worked at the counter. Now she was cutting up peaches to go in the pies she was making.
“I’m about ready to go home,” I said, just to make conversation.
“Hand me the cinnamon out of the pantry,” Willie Mae said.
I went to the big closet they used for a pantry and found the cinnamon. “Aren’t you?” I asked her.
“Aren’t I what?”
“Ready to go home.”
Willie Mae sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on the peaches piled up in the pie shells. “What would you be doin’ if you was home—besides warting me in the kitchen like you doing now?”
I could think of a lot of things, but I didn’t really believe Willie Mae expected an answer, so I went outside and sat in one of the rockers in front of the hotel. I watched the tourists dressed in summer shorts and sundresses strolling in and out of the shops across the street. I was mighty tired of being cooped up in this place and was hoping Biggie would solve this case in a hurry so we could go home. I rocked for awhile, just being lazy in the sun. I
must have dozed off, because the next thing I remember was Biggie shaking me.
“J.R., wake up. You’re going to get sunburned sitting out here. Come inside this minute!”
I rubbed my eyes while I followed Biggie into the lobby. “What time is it?”
“Almost 11:30.” Biggie flopped down on the tufted sofa. “I’m roasting. Go in the kitchen and bring me a glass of tea, then I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing.”
I brought back the tea, then sat beside Biggie on the sofa. She took a long drink and set the glass on a marble-topped table. “Well,” she said. “That hits the spot!”
“Did you talk to the child protective folks?”
“Yep. They’re sending somebody out there this very afternoon. They say if things are as bad as all that, they can get an emergency order from the judge and take her right away—today. The caseworker told me she knew a nice young married couple, trained in child psychology. She said she was pretty sure they would be glad to take her.”
“Boy, I sure feel sorry for them.” I was still mad at that girl for almost getting me killed. “Did you talk to the sheriff?”
“Yep. In fact, there he is, now. He’s going to take blood samples from the blanket and also the soil from the floor of the little room. Not much doubt in my mind, it’ll be Annabeth’s. After that, I stopped by the County Clerk’s office and had a little chat with Emily Faye.”
“Why, Biggie?”
Biggie decided to be mysterious. “Oh, just girl talk. Afterward, she took her coffee break and we went down to the Style Shoppe. I bought her an outfit and talked to
her about the possibility of her going off to college in the fall.” She grinned. “Now, let’s see if Willie Mae has lunch ready.”
After lunch, Biggie announced that she was going to have a nap, but I was to wake her at 2:00 if she wasn’t up.
At 2:00, I went to her room and tapped on her door. She was sitting on the bed glancing through her little address book. When she saw me, she dropped it into her purse. “I know who the killer is,” she said.
“Who?”
I felt a chill go down my spine when she told me.
“Now, don’t you breathe a word to anybody. I’m going, right now, to ask Mary Ann to help me set up a meeting this evening. I want everyone there, including the members of the historical society.”
S
upper was at six. Afterward, we all filed into the lobby to wait for the others. Willie Mae brought in a tray holding two bottles of wine, one white and one red, a bottle of brandy, and a carafe of coffee. She set them on the lobby bar. Rosebud followed with glasses and china coffee cups and saucers. Miss Mary Ann fluttered around nervously, putting out ashtrays and arranging things to her liking. Mr. Masters talked in a low voice to Rosebud, who had taken a seat beside him, while Lucas sat under a floor lamp reading a large book. Brian came in last and sat at the little game table with his magazine. He didn’t look at anyone.
The first to arrive were Sheriff Dugger and Deputy Wiggs. They both took seats in straight chairs near the door. The sheriff was still pale, but seemed stronger than he had before. I watched as Deputy Wiggs got out his tape
recorder and set it on the table next to him. Biggie walked over to them and they had a conversation, which I couldn’t hear, even though I tried.
Next to get there was Hen Lester. She was wearing a royal blue pants suit with a red scarf and a frown on her face. “I hope this won’t take long,” she said. “I have my study club tonight, and I’m recording secretary.”
“Just have a seat, Hen,” Biggie said. “I know this is an inconvenience, and I’ll make it as short as possible.”
Hen walked to the bar, poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a seat on the tufted sofa opposite Rosebud and Mr. Masters. She was no sooner seated than Alice LaRue came in followed by Emily. Emily was wearing a slim straight sundress made of some kind of silky cloth. It was yellow with a design of green leaves and pink flowers. Her hair was pulled back with a yellow ribbon and little ringlets hung down the back and sides. She had sandals on her feet. Everybody stared.
“I don’t blame you for looking.” Alice flopped down beside Hen. “Don’t she look a fright?”
“Not a bit of it,” Lucas said. “She’s lovely. Just lovely.” He got up and offered his chair to Emily, who smiled and took it.
“She certainly is,” Hen said.
“It’s a waste of money, is what it is,” Alice said. “Child’s got a whole closet full of perfectly good clothes—mine that I’ve got too fat for. And now she’s talking about going off to school. I don’t know what’s got into that girl.” She talked about Emily like she wasn’t even in the room.
“Mama,” Emily said, “I’m making my own money,
now, and I’ve got a trust left by my granddaddy. From now on, I’m going to do as I please.”
Alice seemed to deflate like this air leaking out of a balloon. She sank back on the couch.
Brian just stared.
Biggie stood in front of the marble fireplace, her head barely reaching the mantel. “Everyone’s here, so we can get started. Refreshments are available at the bar. Please, help yourselves.”
Alice LaRue was the first there, pouring herself a healthy slug of brandy in a round glass. Lucas had the same while Mary Ann and Mr. Masters had white wine. Hen refilled her coffee cup. Biggie watched while they served themselves. When they had finally settled back down in their chairs, she spoke.
“I have brought you together this evening to reveal the murderer of Annabeth Baugh.”
Lucas half-rose out of his chair, then flopped back down.
“Oh, my!” Hen Lester said.
Alice snorted loudly. “Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of Hercules Parrot, or something? We got a perfectly good sheriff to do our sleuthing, thank you, ma’am.”
Biggie held up her hand. “As you know, the sheriff had to have emergency surgery, and he asked for my help. He had heard that I’ve had some success with this sort of thing in the past.” She looked at the sheriff, who nodded.
“Well,” Hen sniffed, “I still don’t see why …”
Biggie walked over to the bar and poured herself a
glass of white wine. “Would you like to explain why you were giving Annabeth money?” She looked hard at Hen.
“What? I shall not! That’s nobody’s business but mine.”
“Would you prefer to go down to the jail and explain to the sheriff and his deputy?”
Hen looked at the officers, and looked away quickly. “No, of course not. I’ll tell if I must. But it has absolutely nothing to do with that unfortunate girl’s death. Nothing!”
“Why don’t you just tell us, Miz Lester,” the sheriff said softly.
“Oh, all right.” Hen switched angrily in her chair and took a breath. “It was because of something that happened long ago, when I was just a girl, before I married Franklin.” She looked at Lucas, who had sat up straight in his chair and was glaring at her. She stiffened her back and went on. “Last summer, Annabeth helped me out at home, just light housekeeping is all. I had Honeysuckle coming in once a week to do the heavy stuff. Annabeth just made the beds, loaded the dishwasher, and prepared a light lunch for me and Franklin.” She looked at Biggie. “That’s my husband. She would go home by one usually.”
Miss Mary Ann nodded. “It was because of Hen that I hired Annabeth to come help me here at the hotel.”
“Go on,” Biggie said.
“Well, one day,” Hen went on, “I sent the girl into my bedroom to straighten out my cedar chest where I keep Mama’s good linens, old pictures, mementos, that sort of thing. I wanted her to air the linens and re-press them.”
“Could you get on with it?” Alice LaRue drained her glass and headed for the bar for a refill.
Hen barely glanced at her. “I went in to get some hand lotion and what should I see but that young snoop reading my diary—the one I kept when I was a girl. She looked at me with those big blue eyes of hers and began babbling about how beautifully I expressed my feelings for a certain man that I happened to be in love with at one time. The nerve!”
“And for that, you gave her money?” Lew Masters was dumfounded.
“No, of course not. It was
who
the man was that was a problem.” Hen’s hand shook as she raised her coffee cup to her mouth. “Oh, I just can’t go on. It’s too humiliating!”
Biggie went to the sofa and sat beside Hen. “It can’t be all that bad, honey. Everyone has something in their past that they’re not proud of. Now, go on.”
Hen looked trapped, but continued. “You see, he was … he was
married
. Oh, my face burns with shame to this day, even though I was only a girl at the time. I wasn’t married yet. I hadn’t even met Franklin at that time. Why, I must have been—what? Seventeen? Yes, that’s it. I’d just graduated from high school and had taken my very first job. I was so proud—to be out in the world, earning my own money.”
“That was a long time ago,” the sheriff said. “Ancient history. Why would you care if it got out today?”
“Why?” Hen’s voice rose. “Because Franklin never knew, you fool. What would you know about propriety, about virtue?” She burst into tears. “F-Franklin thought I was
pure
when he married me. I never wanted him to know otherwise.” She stood up and pointed at Lucas. “It was him! That’s the villain who stole my innocence.”
“This is rubbish. Stop it, right now.” Lucas pounded the arm of his chair.
“I have to tell.” Hen looked daggers at him. “If I don’t, they’ll take me down to that nasty jail. It’s all your fault, anyway.” She turned to Biggie. “I was working for Lucas in his law office. Of course, he was much older than I, and so good-looking. I had a terrible crush on him, and he knew it. The rogue took advantage of me.” She paused.
“Go on,” Biggie urged.
“Well, one evening, he asked me to stay after hours and help with a case he was working on … .”
Biggie put her out of her misery. “I think we can guess the rest. Was she blackmailing you? Annabeth, I mean.”
“Oh, no. She just kept talking about how sweet it was. I told her she must never tell a soul and if she kept quiet, I’d give her money from time to time—just to help out because they were so poor and all. She assured me that that wasn’t necessary, but I just felt that the money might ensure her silence. That’s all there was to it. I only gave her the money to keep her from talking about me all over town.”
“You’d be surprised to know how dull the affairs of the older generation are to the young,” Biggie said. “She probably never gave it another thought.”
Lucas stood up and started for the door. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.”
“That’s right, you old fool. Run away. Run away the way you always do when things get sticky.” Hen turned to Biggie. “I wasn’t the only one. After me, it was Bitsy Weems down at the drugstore, then that little Murphy girl. You thought nobody knew, didn’t you Lucas. Well, everybody in town knew about your little peccadilloes,
how you liked them young and tender. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out you’d been after Annabeth. Maybe you killed her.”
Lucas was shaking so much, I thought he’d have a stroke. He sank back into his chair. “You harridan … you witch! I’m leaving!”
The sheriff spoke from the back of the room. He didn’t stand up. “Before you go, Lawyer Fitzgerald, maybe you’d like to tell us what you were doing prowling around the hotel the night the young lady was killed.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I was getting some warm milk.”
Now, the sheriff got up and stood beside Biggie. “Miss Mary Ann, could you possibly remember whether there was any evidence that anyone had fixed warm milk when you came down to fix breakfast? A dirty pan? Anything like that?”
Miss Mary Ann shook her head. “In fact, we were out of milk.” She looked at Lucas. “The milkman always comes at seven. I remember, I’d had Annabeth leave a note for the milkman after supper.”
“All right, I’ll tell you even though it’s nobody’s business. I heard
him
,” he pointed to Lew Masters, “coming out of his room. Oh, I knew what he was up to. He was going to sneak down to Mary Ann’s room.”
“Mind me asking what kind of a stake you had in that?” the sheriff asked.
“He’s an outsider, a coffin salesman, for God’s sake. Mary Ann married into one of the oldest and most distinguished families in this town, the Quincys. My family has looked after the Quincy family affairs for generations. I, well, I feel responsible for her.”
“Well, I swear!” Mary Ann said.
Alice LaRue got up and poured herself another brandy. She turned and faced the room, swaying a little on her feet. “What is this, a goddamn fishing expedition? If you know anything, Biggie, spit it out. Otherwise, we’ll keep our dirty laundry to ourselves, thank you very much. And as for you, Sheriff, I can have you fired in a blue-eyed minute!”
Emily stood up. “Mama, sit down and shut up!”
I like to dropped my teeth when the old lady, meek as can be, went back to her chair and sat down. Brian looked at Emily with a half-smile on his face.
“You’re right, Alice,” Biggie said. “I will get to the point. As most of you know, I went out to Caddo Lake yesterday morning to visit with the Baughs. That visit was largely unproductive aside for the fact that I was able to rescue an innocent child who was being badly abused. However, by chance, we happened to stop by the home of a Mr. Hance Johnson, who was able to shed some light on the situation. His family has lived as close neighbors to the Baughs for several generations. Mr. Johnson, himself, is near ninety. He told me that, many years ago, Mrs. Baugh, that would have been Mule Baugh’s grandmother, gave birth to a stillborn child. He remembers as a small boy hearing his parents talk about how they buried the child under a cottonwood tree. Days later, his parents said, another infant appeared in the Baugh household, a beautiful golden-haired child who grew up to be Annabeth’s grandmother.”
“The crazy one,” Hen mused.
“That’s right,” Biggie said. “The crazy one. Only, she
was more retarded than crazy. I did some checking at the courthouse and found that on June 2,1906, two babies were born in this county, one a stillborn child born to Coralee Baugh, wife of Augustus Baugh. The other born to Rachel Quincy, a girl, Marcella. No father’s name is mentioned in the records, and we could find no further reference to anyone named Marcella in the Quincy family after that, no death, no marriage, no probate. It’s as if she ceased to exist after her birth.”
“Rubbish!” Lucas barked.
Biggie took the little brown book out of her purse and handed it to Lucas. “Your father made payments to Augustus Baugh for eighteen years, Lucas.”
“My father had numerous business interests all over the county,” Lucas said. “That doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Maybe so,” Biggie said, “but Mr. Johnson said it was common knowledge around there that your father made those payments to the Baughs to keep them quiet about exactly who fathered Rachel Quincy’s baby. I wonder if that was why you have always tried to make people believe that crazy Marcella Baugh was the child of Diamond Lucy. Was it to distract them from thinking about her real origins?”
Lucas shut his mouth with a snap and wouldn’t say another word. Miss Mary Ann turned white as a sheet, and her voice trembled as she spoke. “It’s over, Lucas,” she said. “I’ve got to tell the truth.” She looked at Biggie. “Marcella was the child of incest between brother and sister. That’s why she was the way she was. It was the shame of the Quincy family. I wasn’t supposed to know, but old Grandma Quincy told me about it before she died. Oh,
honey.” She looked at Brian. “That’s why I had to … I couldn’t …”
BOOK: Biggie and the Quincy Ghost
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