Authors: H. M. Mann
Redemption (10 page)
Overton’s pulse raced. “You know who killed J?”
“
Everybody knows who killed Jeremiah! Everybody
black,
anyway. You white people have always had shit for brains.”
“
Who?”
“
You don’t know? Sheriff Hughes knew, the peckerwood.”
I doubt that.
“He didn’t tell me before he died. So who is it?”
There was silence at the other end. “You
really
don’t know.”
If I knew, I’d arrest whoever’s responsible so I could sleep nights.
“No ma’am, I don’t.”
“
And here all along I thought you was in on it.”
“
In on what?”
“
A cover-up. That’s what you white people do when black folks are dead, but I ain’t got time for this shit. I got funeral arrangements to make. You takin’ him up to Pine?”
“
Uh, no ma’am. To Calhoun. But Mrs. Williams, please tell me who you think killed J.”
“
That’s somethin’ you’ll have to figure out your damn self.”
“
But Mrs. Williams—”
She hung up, and Overton hit re-dial repeatedly only to get a busy signal again and again.
Figure it out on your own.
He thought better on paper, so he wrote down what he knew or thought he knew:
1 Darcy and J had a relationship of some kind.
2 J was killed.
3 The church burned the same night.
4 Annie could have seen the church burn from her kitchen window.
5 Darcy lived on Jimmy Lee’s property.
6 Annie lived on Jimmy Lee’s property.
7 Lester lived on Jimmy Lee’s property.
8 Darcy died on or about July 3.
9 Annie died on July 5.
10 Lester died on or about July 5.
11 Jimmy Lee is auctioning off their properties this Saturday.
12 A pink Cadillac from a Calhoun junkyard killed Annie, driver unknown except for Annie
saying she saw J.
13 Annie kept “files” on Pine County people but not Lester, Darcy, or herself.
14 Jimmy Lee is having trouble with his campaign.
15 Creed Rydell is in Calhoun City Jail for $3,000 in unpaid parking tickets.
He sat back and looked at his list. “Jimmy Lee,” he said, “you got some explaining to do.”
He drove to Callie’s, parked in the barn, and was about to tap on the back door when he saw a note. “Gone north to find Isaiah so he can come to the you-know-what. Be back ? I’ll call you. C.”
He ate a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner at his house while watching SportsCenter when the phone rang.
Callie!
“Hello, beautiful.”
“
Well, hello to you, too.”
Autumn! Damn. I thought this sort of thing only happened in the movies.
“Sorry, Miss Harper, I thought you were someone else.”
“
So there’s another woman in your life? Who is she?”
Overton changed the subject. “So what did you find out?”
“
Oh, I don’t know. This ‘n’ that.”
Twenty seconds of silence followed. “Autumn?”
“
I’m still here.”
“
Well?”
“
Well what? You answer my question, I’ll answer yours.”
Reporters are a mean breed of human.
“You don’t know her, okay? Let’s leave it at that. Now, what did you find out?”
“
Is it ...”
“
Autumn, please. You’ll find out in due time. Now who owns what?”
Autumn sighed. “I already know who it is, Miles.”
“
You do?”
“
Come on. It’s the best-kept secret in Pine County that
everybody
knows about already.”
“
Oh, I don’t think
everybody
—”
“
Miles, you’ve been seeing Callie Poindexter for over fifteen years.”
Close to sixteen, actually.
“Who told you that?”
“
I have my sources. So is it true?”
Overton covered the mouthpiece and cursed. “Miss Harper, I can find out who owns what tomorrow on my own. Thanks for your help.” He hung up and changed the channel to WGN.
The White Sox? Where are my Cubs? This day can’t get any worse.
The phone rang again. “Hello?”
“
What, no ‘hello, beautiful’ this time?” Autumn asked. “Come on, Miles, I’m just messin’ with you. You don’t have to tell me what I already know. You’ve always gotten the black vote, and now you know why.”
What does my seeing Callie have to do with voting?
“Miss Harper, there aren’t that many black voters in and around Snow.”
“
I know. But there are just enough to get you elected again and again.”
She might be right.
“Listen, it’s getting late, and—”
“
Okay, okay. I’ll tell you what I found out.”
“
Thank you.”
“
First off, the Sellers own a whole bunch of real estate around Snow. Aside from me, Joe Graves, and the bluebloods on Poplar Street, the Sellers own everything within five miles of Snow.”
Overton whistled. “No kidding?”
“
Surprised the hell out of me, too. Makes most of the farmers into sharecroppers, doesn’t it?”
It does.
“What about the list?”
“
I’m still working on it.”
“
How?”
“
I’m going old school. I’m using the phone book and a map.”
“
Oh.”
“
I’ll have it for you tomorrow, but I have to tell you what I heard up in Pine. It seems that Jimmy Lee is way behind in the polls and extremely short of cash. I guess Jimmy Lee thought his name would be enough to get him elected, and maybe twenty years ago that would have worked. But we live in a TV generation, and Jimmy Lee hasn’t even begun airing ads.”
“
It’s only July.”
“
Connor Bowles has already run several thirty-second spots on all the TV stations and runs a couple full-minute spots on most of the radio stations. Jimmy Lee’s fallen way behind. And then there’s this auction all of a sudden. Makes a person think, huh?”
It does.
“How much does a TV ad cost?”
“
Depends on a lot of things. Which station, what time it airs, how long it is, who makes it. A half million can’t hurt, though.”
No it couldn’t
. “Uh, thanks, Miss Harper. See you tomorrow.”
“
At Annie’s?”
“
Uh, sure. That’s where I’ll be. Have the list with you.”
“
Good-bye, Sheriff. And if Callie calls, say hello for me.”
Overton added to his list:
16 Jimmy Lee is in debt, needs cash quickly.
But as a landlord, couldn’t he just evict them? And if he couldn’t evict them, why? Why go through all the trouble of killing them? And how did such a wealthy man get into so much debt? His daddy was loaded!
Overton decided to sleep on the couch next to the phone in case Callie called, and a little after midnight, the phone rang.
“
Hello?”
“
Have you thought it all the way through from the beginning?” a gravelly voice whispered.
“
Mrs. Williams?”
“
No,” the voice whispered. “No. But you’re getting warmer.”
Click.
What the hell is going on?
Wednesday, July 7, 1999
13
Jimmy Lee Sellers, Junior, was more nervous than he’d ever been because of the voice on the other end.
“
What are you gonna do, Jimmy Lee?”
“
I don’t know.”
“
I got needs, Jimmy Lee.”
“
I know, I know.”
Too fuckin’ many.
“That’s what the auction’s for.”
“
How you gonna auction off anythin’ with all that police tape up?”
“
I’ll figure something out. Just relax, okay?”
“
Easy for you to say. I don’t have the luxury of relaxin’. You fix this, and fix it now.”
“
I’ll try.”
“
Don’t try, Jimmy Lee.
Succeed
. Remember?”
“
I remember.”
But I wish to God I could forget.
14
Overton looked at the list of tenants on Sellers land while Autumn rummaged through the piles upstairs and Ramsey boxed the stacks in the basement of Annie’s house. He knew most of these folks from birth, but three names jumped out at him: Michael Lavender, Sharese White Lavender, and Margaret Ledbetter.
He read the names aloud to Autumn. “What do these names have in common?”
“
You caught that, too? Pine County High, class of eighty-four, same as J. Sharese used to go with J, Michael was the fullback who blocked for J and later married Sharese, Jimmy Lee was the quarterback, and Margaret wrote all about J and Jimmy Lee in the school paper. Quite a quintet.”
Two blacks, two whites, and one in between.
“What was Darcy’s class?”
Autumn closed her eyes and turned her head to the side. “Eighty-five, I think. A year before me.”
“
But you said earlier—”
Her eyes popped open. “That’s right! She got sick during her senior year and spent a lot of time in a hospital in Calhoun.”
“
What for?”
Autumn pushed her hair behind her ears. “We all thought it was for mental reasons, you know, her so-called boyfriend getting killed and all. But another rumor had her pregnant.” She took a deep breath. “By J.”
Another piece of the puzzle?
“How hard is that to check out?”
“
Easy. Check the
Times
for birth announcements or give a call to the Bureau of Vital Statistics.”
“
Well, if we knew the hospital she was in—”"
“
That’s next to impossible unless you’re family. I bet Creed could do it.”
“
He’s in jail.”
“
Drunk in public?”
“
Parking tickets.”
“
Creed Rydell owned a car?”
Now that is really strange. The man barely owned the clothes on his back. The only thing he ever owned was a case of bad breath.
“Guess he did. Maybe I should go visit him.”
“
Or call someone in Calhoun about the tickets. That’s what I’d do.”
“
Why?”
“
You’ll find out where he was parking.”
“
And what will that tell me?”
Autumn rolled her eyes. “What hospital Darcy was in.”
“
How in the ...”
It just might be possible.
“You think Creed visited her?”
Autumn shrugged. “Maybe when he was about to be a grandfather, he started playing father, and you know that man was so cheap he wouldn’t pay to park.” She slipped a cell phone from her back pocket. “You can use my phone.”