Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (10 page)

“Hah. If he's as rich as he is good looking, he'll be just fine.”

“But he's old.”

“Not as old as she was.”

“Is he that nice-looking guy with that thick gray hair. Tall, quiet.”

“Yup. Surprised me, too. They were on their way to
her
condo. Would have been picked up by
her
limo driver. Everything was paid for by
her
credit card. Annoying when someone brags all the time like that. Too bad they didn't fly, but her doctor said no more airplanes, something about blood clots. Maybe that's what killed her.”

“Too bad they didn't have a sleeper,” Marti added.

“Oh, her husband and the lady with the blue outfit insisted that they go coach. Can't say why.”

The attendant stood up, cupped her hand over her eyes, and looked outside.

“Will we be here much longer?”

“Another hour at least. You want anything? They've got coffee on in the galley, but don't tell anyone.”

Marti thanked her and opened her journal. She would write about what was going on now. Theo and Mike would really be surprised when they heard about it. She looked at her list, added Miss Money Bags beside Lindstrum's name, erased Mr. Borzak's question mark and added Mr. Lindstrum—attractive, younger man. She decided that Miss Mouse was Mrs. Borzak, but put a question mark beside that. Miss Prissy she left blank. That done, she returned to the boys' journals.

With typical flourish, Mike wrote “Toilet lock!!! Use your toilet lock!!! Don't go to the doors on the side!!! The side toilet's are too small!!! Go to the door in the center!!! The bathroom is bigger there!!!! You won't get stuck trying to get out!!!!! And don't try to wait until you get to Kingman!!!”

Theo had written, “I think the conductor got tired of listening to them talking about their trip to the bathroom, because he helped them get their things and go downstairs. I am glad they are gone. It is nice and quiet now. He closed the door to the room they are in. Now they can talk the whole trip and not bother anyone.”

When the female attendant came back with a cup of coffee for each of them, Marti asked, “How's that poor man doing who's got the arthritis?”

“Mr. Felton?”

“Yes.”

“Lord, he looks like he's on his last leg, too. And he's taking at least half a dozen prescriptions, not to mention drinking that nasty looking bottle of homemade stuff his wife makes him drink. I hope he doesn't die before we reach Kingman. That's way in Arizona, and we haven't even been able to make it out of New Mexico.”

As soon as the attendant finished her coffee and left, Marti wrote Mrs. Felton beside Miss Prissy and added her husband, and his description—crippled and sickly—to her list. The third man had to be Mrs. Borzak's
husband, but Marti still could not remember anything about him. Beneath the names she added, salt shaker with home grown herbs and a bottle of homemade tonic.

She flipped through the boys' journals again to see if they had made note of anything about the husbands. Theo had written, “Poor Mr. Borzak. He stutters. That must be why he never says anything. Every time he tries to say something, Mrs. Borzak tells him to be quiet. She ordered the lasagna for him for dinner, but he kept saying st-st-st. I think he wanted the steak. Mrs. Borzak wants to be the boss of everybody, but Mrs. Lindstrum won't let her.”

Ponytail jumped up, walked the narrow distance between the rows of windows without bumping into the seats, and said, “Will we ever get out of here? They should have brought in a flight-for-life helicopter.”

The woman consulted a train schedule. “I wonder what time the bars open in Albuquerque?”

“Hell if I know. Now that another one of them's gotten sick . . . I hope there's room for all of them in the ambulance.”

“You mean they might not all get off here? Do not even think it.”

“Where are all of them going to fit in one ambulance, with two of them sick?”

“If one of them is left behind, I will never take the train again. At least on the bus . . .”

“You'd be stuck in the desert with a stinking bathroom and no water fountain.”

The woman didn't answer.

Marti wanted to ask who else was sick, but decided to stay out of the conversation. Instead, she looked through Mike's journal seeking an entry about a man who stuttered. It wasn't hard to find. Mike had written “MR. BORZAK!!!!!!” then, “ ‘d-d-d-d-don't g-g-g-give me any m-m-m-m-ore of that.' Mrs. Borzak FINALLY let him say something, but she made him drink that yucky looking tonic anyway. It has stuff floating in it!!!!”

Marti flipped back though the entries and added Grandma's tonic to Mrs. Lindstrum, Mr. Borzak, and Mr. Felton. All of the sick people. She checked the entries again. The three of them were using the shaker filled with homegrown herbs also.

“The least they could do is put on a movie or serve sandwiches or something,” Ponytail said.

“And serve drinks, like they do on planes.”

“If whoever it is wasn't dead when they called for an ambulance, they're damned sure dead by now.”

“This is no place to have an emergency,” the woman agreed. “I thought the club car would be open all night.”

Typical alcoholic, Marti thought. One-track mind. Annoyed, she began to wish that she had taken the plane.

The female attendant came back, and was bombarded with questions. When Ponytail and the woman couldn't get anything out of her, they sulked at the other end of the car. The attendant sat next to Marti.

“Damn,” she said in a soft voice. “Like I like sitting here any more than they do.”

“I heard someone else is sick,” Marti whispered.

“Mr. Felton. He's not really complaining. Just says he doesn't feel good. No chest pains or anything, thank God. I don't know how to use the defilibrator. But his wife is almost hysterical. ‘You can't be sick, you can't be sick. Not now, Howard, my God, not now. You are not sick, do you understand me, Howard? You are not sick.' She is really upset, pacing, checking her watch, just frantic. Having her friend die like that and now her husband complaining, it's just too much for her. Poor man keeps asking her for his tonic, but she insists he's had enough and doesn't need any more. Gave him one of those tablets you put under your tongue though. Poor woman is just beside herself with fear. And her so pretty, and him so old. Folks sure do surprise you sometimes.”

“Hey!” Ponytail called. “You know what time this ambulance is coming?”

“Like maybe before daybreak,” the woman added.

The attendant stood up to leave. “They're on their way.”

Marti looked at the meager entries in her journal, added nitroglycerin beside Mr. Felton's name, and decided to see what else she could mine from what Mike and Theo had written. This time she began at the beginning, looking for entries she had skipped.

Mike had written, “Sick people here. Calling all sick people!! Doctor
Lindstrum is in!!! Line right up!!! Don't listen to your doctor! Do what Dr. Lindstrum says!! Chest pain, Mr. Felton? Heartburn. Don't take that digitalis! Drink Grandma's tonic!!! Chest pain, Mrs. Lindstrum. Heart trouble. Take that digitalis. Dr. Lindstrum!! Calling Dr. Lindstrum!!! Don't do anything your real doctor says.”

Marti noted who was taking digitalis and looked for a similar entry in Theo's journal.

“Mrs. Lindstrum must really be sick. Maybe that is why she's so thin and looks so pale. She has a bad heart, blood sugar, (what is that?), hypertension, anemia, bunions, and an ingrown toenail. Mr. Lindstrum said she has halitosis too, and flatulence. Mrs. Borzak told her to just keep taking that tonic her grandmother used to make. She said her grandmother lived to be a hundred and three and drank it every day. I hope Mrs. Borzak brought enough since it's made from stuff she grows in her garden. They only have cactus in Arizona.” Then, “Mrs. Lindstrum should stop talking long enough to listen to her husband. This is the third time he's told her to take her digitalis. He keeps telling her she forgot. She must be absentminded, too. She can't find the other stuff she is supposed to take, Coumadin. He says she doesn't need any of that anyway.”

Marti added, “chest pain—no digitalis” beside Mr. Felton's name and chest pain—digitalis, no Coumadin beside Mrs. Lindstrum's name. As she reread what she had written, flashing lights could be seen in the distance. By the time the ambulance arrived, flanked by two police cars, she was certain that Mrs. Felton was dead and Mr. Felton and Mr. Borzak were sick because of what their spouses were giving them, or not allowing them to take. She went downstairs to advise the officers to confiscate Mrs. Borzak's tonic and her special salt shaker. She was also going to tell the paramedics to make sure that Mrs. Lindstrum, Mr. Borzak, and Mr. Felton were tested for homegrown poisons. She looked out the window. Mr. Felton and Mrs. Borzak were standing close together. There were two gurneys, each with a shrouded body. Mrs. Felton was kneeling beside one and crying. Marti could hardly wait to begin writing in her journal. Wait until Theo and Mike found out about this.

In 1991 the ZICA Creative Arts and Literary Guild, a collection of writers and artists in which I am a member, decided to begin pulling colors, numbers, and phrases from a “hat” that would begin the first sentence of a poem, short story, or novel. When the number “3” was pulled, I knew that I wanted to write about triplets, but I wanted them to be best friends not siblings. I developed three best friends in a small, coastal village in the late 1920s. I had the townspeople call the girls the Triplets. The eleven-year-old Triplets solve mysteries in the Poplar Cove Mystery series. I have written three middle-grade novels,
The Secret of St. Gabriel's Tower
and
The Secret of Morton's End. The Secret of Sugarman's Circus
is currently seeking a publisher and will be available in 2004. In each book of the series, I attempt to tell a portion of African-American history, for example, Juneteenth, Buffalo Soldiers, and in this short story, a taste of the 369th Infantry Division. I was thinking of writing an adult murder mystery for Eleanor's anthology, but she e-mailed me and said, “I'm so glad that you're going to submit a children's mystery.” So I decided, or rather, the Triplets decided, to add “The Secret of the 369th Infantry Nurse” to their adventures.

It was a few days before Armistice Day in 1928, and most children, animals, and things in general were enjoying the quiet that enveloped coastal towns just before sunset in the early fall. This sense of calm also covered the small
“colored”
village of Poplar Cove, California. Poplar Cove, brightly decorated in red, white, and blue ribbons, was one of three close-knit towns (the others being Grant's Cove and Marshall Cove) that hugged the northern California shoreline in the early twentieth century. The town lost five very special men in the Great War, and it and others in the TriCove area rotated the celebration of the end of the war with lots of fireworks, a parade, picnics, and a dance. This year it was Poplar Cove's turn to host, and the town had outdone itself in decorating every structure on Main Street. The ribbons usually went up on All Hallow's Eve and remained in place until Thanksgiving. The quiet nestled among the leaves and waited for adventure. Adventure would happen a few hours later in the image of Mrs. Lana Sue Barton.

While most children were content to read books and play in their yards with their siblings and friends, three of Poplar Cove's more interesting young inhabitants were busy minding other people's business. These individuals were eleven-year-old best girlfriends that were so close that the townspeople nickname them the Triplets. The Triplets prided themselves in their role as “junior deputies,” a name that the sheriff had given them the year before in a misguided attempt to keep them out of police business. The Triplets, however, took every opportunity to
help
Sheriff Brown manage not only police business but the business of the town as well. So when their school friend, Three, short for Eli Shaw the Third, walked past them deep in thought, the girls seized the opportunity to find out the reason for his frown. Not that Three smiled a lot, in fact he was a rather solemn child, but on this particular morning he was more sorrowful than normal.

“Something must be wrong with Three,” Amber Walker said, her foghorn voice startling a few heron that rested in the nearby Monterey pines.

“He looks fine to me,” Jessica “JJ” Johnson replied, as she pulled an old straw hat over her freckled forehead. She and Robyn Jones, the third
member of the Triplets, looked outside the Jefferson Five and Dime and Ice Cream Parlor where they had just completed their second ice cream cone. Eating ice cream together was the third best thing the girls enjoyed. First, of course, was being together, and second was putting a mystery into every little gathering. Getting up and going outside into the warm autumn weather, the girls followed Three into the park into the middle of the Main Square.

“Three. Three, wait up,” Robyn called. “What's the matter? You look like you've lost your best friend.”

“Oh, hi,” he mumbled, looking down at his dust-covered cowboy boots. “It's Grandpa. He received a letter a few days ago. He hardly ever receives any mail. I just know that it's bad news 'cuz the few times he has received letters it's always been that someone he knew was very sick or had died. When I . . . when I . . . I asked to see it, he . . . he . . . just walked away from me like I wasn't there. He even
smelled
the envelope. Now, why would he do that? He hasn't mentioned it since, but I see it sticking out of his shirt pocket. Grandpa's never kept any secrets from me before.” His voice cracked as he tried to suppress a sob. He turned quickly, but the Triplets saw the tears in his eyes. He walked under the Poplar Cove water tower's brightly draped pillars. One of the red, white, and blue ribbons blew in his face. He glared at it, pushed it away, then ran down Calhoun Street toward the Old Mill Road.

“I've never seen Three so unhappy. You know he thinks the world of his Grandpa. What could have been in that letter that Mr. Shaw wouldn't show him?” Amber asked.

“Grown-ups have all kinds of secrets. Maybe it's a surprise for Three's birthday,” Robyn answered.

“Three's birthday was in May. Besides why would Mr. Shaw smell an envelope with information about a present for Three?” Jessica added, enunciating each word as she tried to keep her lisp from regaining its rich hold on her words.

“Then we'll just have to find out what was in the letter, who wrote it, and let Three read it,” Amber said.

“Oh, and just how are
we
going to get, much less
read,
a letter that belongs to Mr. Shaw?” Robyn asked.

“We'll just have to think of something. After all, Mr. Shaw fed us soup when we escaped from Miss Swanson,” Amber said, remembering last year's mystery with the Triplets' substitute teacher. “He likes us. We can go over to the Shaw's place to see if Three wants to go to Grant's Cove to help bring . . . no . . . no . . . that's not going to work. Why would we go to Grant's Cove to bring anything back? The only things Grant's Cove has that we don't have here is a motion picture palace and the library,” Amber said.

“We need to think of something different. We need to get a grown-up to help us. Mr. Shaw isn't going to just hand over a letter that he won't let his own grandson read,” Robyn said.

“A grown-up. Who?” Jessica asked.

“Mrs. Wilson could help us,” Amber answered. Mrs. Wilson was a surrogate grandmother to the girls who frequently
saved
them from their parents.

“Why would she do that?” Robyn asked.

“Then
you
think of something. Everything
I
say you find something wrong with,” Amber said, folding her arms across her chest. She kicked at a stick lying in the path.

“Look, isn't that Mr. Shaw?” Jessica asked, pointing in the direction of an old man dressed in a light brown linen suit walking toward the train depot. The girls looked up just in time to see Mr. Eli Shaw step inside the train station. The 11:05 whistle sounded as the train rounded the bend at the edge of town. It would be in the station in a few minutes.

“Let's follow him. Maybe we can find out about the letter once we're on the train,” Amber said.

“ON the TRAIN!” Jessica and Robyn shouted in unison.

“I can't go on the train,” Jessica said.

“I'm
not
going on the train,” Robyn added. “Besides, in case you've forgotten, my father is the train master. He'd never let me get on the Sacramento train just to follow one of our neighbors. And what would your father say, Amber?”

Amber sighed. Her father was the mayor. “Okay. Then we'll ask your father where Mr. Shaw is going.”

“I already
told
you, Sacramento. The 11:05 stops in Sacramento.
Sometimes Amber I don't think that you remember anything that I've taught you about the train schedule.” Now it was Robyn's turn to kick at the stick.

“While the two of you were arguing, I've been thinking that we should just go over and tell Mr. Shaw that Three feels bad about whatever happened regarding the letter. Maybe he will tell us what's in the letter, and then we can ask to see it. That's what I think,” Jessica said, as she began walking up Main Street toward the train station. While the girls were talking, the 11:05 pulled into Poplar Cove and passengers began getting off.

“Wherever Mr. Shaw is going it must be very fancy. He's wearing his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes,” Jessica added.

“You're right. I hadn't noticed that he's wearing his best clothes. Where's Mrs. Shaw?” Amber asked, as she and Robyn rushed to catch Jessica.

“Mrs. Shaw, oh my goodness. Mr. Shaw never comes to town without her,” Robyn answered. The girls turned and looked back down Main Street, as if expecting Mrs. Shaw to step out of one of the businesses. When they turned back toward the train, Mr. Shaw was helping an older, pretty woman out of one of the Pullman cars.

“She sort of looks like my Aunt Beatrice,” Amber said.

“She does wear the same type of beautiful dress, and her hat is just gorgeous,” Robyn added, as she looked over at the woman. She appeared to be near Mr. Shaw's age of sixty. The girls watched as the woman kissed Mr. Shaw on his right cheek.

“Who is that?” Amber boomed. Four newly arriving passengers turned toward the girls. “Who is that?” she repeated a decibel lower.

“No wonder Mrs. Shaw wasn't with him. He's meeting another woman,” Robyn said, he voice choking. She was the more sensitive of the girls, tending to throw up a lot and cry very easily. “I really
like
Mrs. Shaw and who
is
that woman?”

“We have to find out who she is,” Jessica said, “Maybe she's his sister.”

“Sister. Yes, maybe she's his sister,” Robyn replied, sniffing back some tears and wiping others and her runny nose on her shirtsleeve.

While the Triplets were speaking, Mr. Shaw and his new friend put her suitcases in the back of Henry DuPree's car. Henry DuPree was the local
blacksmith and gas station owner. He frequently drove neighbors and strangers to their destinations, if he was at the train station when the limited arrived. He also had two cars that he let people borrow while they were in town.

“Look, Mr. DuPree is driving Mr. Shaw and his friend toward Old Mill Road,” Amber said. “The Shaw's farm is on Old Mill Road. He wouldn't be taking a stranger to his and Mrs. Shaw's home. She must be his sister. See, Robyn, you jump to the wrong conclusion all the time.”

“Hi, Three, we saw your aunt when she got off the 11:05 this morning,” Jessica said, as she swept leaves from the front of her mother's beauty shop.

Three stopped, frowned, and said, “Aunt? Oh, Mrs. Barton. She's not my aunt. She's the nurse who saved Grandpa's life when he returned from the War.”

Three walked away, leaving Jessica staring openmouthed in his wake.
Wait until I tell the girls that the stranger is a nurse who saved Mr. Shaw's life. Isn't that romantic? Maybe someone will make a motion picture of their time in the War. I, of course, would portray Mrs. Barton.
Jessica dreamed of being a motion picture star. She loved acting, because when she concentrated on her lines in a school play, she didn't lisp. Amber and Robyn would often tease her that it didn't matter if she lisped or not, because in silent motion pictures, no one could hear her.

“We know who you are,” Robyn said, when she and the other Triplets met Mrs. Barton, the next day. They were in the post office that was housed in the train station.

“And I know who you are,” Mrs. Barton replied, smiling at the girls.

Homer Jones Senior, Robyn's father, had the flu and had just returned to the post office after a day and a half at home. The girls were helping stack and sort mail and packages that were beginning to pile up in a preholiday rush.

The Triplets smiled back.

“I've heard you're very good detectives. If I ever need a detective or
three, I'll be sure to call on you.” Mrs. Barton paid the postage for a package she was mailing to New York. The three girls had stopped talking long enough to eavesdrop on her conversation and find out the package's destination.

“Good-bye,” Lana Sue said, as she walked outside and down the street toward the middle of town.

A few minutes later she returned to the post office. “How much longer are you girls going to be working here?” she asked.

“Oh, we're almost finished, about another half hour. We need to get the packages ready for the 11:05,” Robyn answered.

“Meet me at the Jefferson Five and Dime and Ice Cream Parlor. You do enjoy ice cream, don't you?”

“Yes,” the Triplets replied in unison.

“I understand that you're good at finding folks. I might need your help finding someone.”

Anyone stopping by the Jefferson Five and Dime and Ice Cream Parlor a few minutes after noon would have found Lana Sue and the Triplets deep in conversation in the back booth by the rear door.