Arsenic and Old Books Page 16

  Kanesha turned up at the front door on the dot, and I let her in. She thanked me for the coffee and cookies, and she drank and munched while I told her what I found in Rachel’s diary.

  Her expression remained enigmatic throughout my narration. When I finished, she said, “That was pretty clear. Sounds to me like Mr. Singletary may not be happy when he finds out about this. Although you’d think he’d already know.”

  I shrugged. “I guess the family members who knew kept quiet about it, and the later generations didn’t find out.”

  Kanesha frowned. “Still pretty odd, though. You’d think somebody outside the Longs and the Singletarys would have found out. Athena wasn’t a big town back then, and I’m sure it wasn’t any different then than it is now. Everybody seems to know everybody else’s business. How could they keep a thing like that secret all these years?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “That’s a good point,” I said slowly. “I’d never heard anything much about the Singletarys, though, until all this election business started up.”

  Kanesha frowned. “I don’t remember Mama talking much about them, either, and she knows all the old families in town.”

  “Maybe I ought to give Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce a call,” I said. Diesel perked up when he heard those names. He chirped several times, and Kanesha smiled.

  “He knows who you’re talking about, doesn’t he?” She stood. “Why don’t you talk to Miss An’gel and ask? They know a lot about families around here that they never let slip. I need to get back to the office.”

  “I will.” I escorted her to the front door. “I hope something breaks soon so you can wrap this up. I don’t like to think about a killer running around free.”

  “You think I do?” Kanesha regarded me grimly. “The president of the college is having fits over this, and the mayor is calling every couple of hours to hear the latest. There’s a lot of pressure to get this solved quickly.”

  “Everybody wants results yesterday,” I said. “I know you’re doing the absolute best you can.”

  Kanesha nodded. “Thanks. Let me hear from you if you come up with anything. I’ll take any lead I can get right now.” She turned and strode down the path to the street.

  I shut the door and walked back into the kitchen. Diesel stood on his hind legs, one front paw extended toward the plate where a lone cookie sat.

  “No, bad kitty,” I told him as I hurried forward to grab the cookie away from him. I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless as to leave the cookie within reach. “I told you these aren’t good for you. Cats aren’t supposed to eat raisins.”

  Diesel meowed loudly as I pulled the cookie away in time. I took it to the sink and put it down the garbage disposal. Diesel warbled in protest loudly enough that I heard him over the grinding of the disposal. I switched it off and turned to look down at my cat. He seemed cross.

  “Too bad,” I said. “If you want a snack go eat more of your crunchies.”

  Diesel turned away and marched off, tail in the air. He didn’t head for the utility room, though. Instead he made for the stairs. I figured he was going to sulk in my bedroom.

  Diesel didn’t pout with me that often, and the good thing about it was that he wasn’t destructive when he did. I would give him a couple of his favorite cat treats at dinner, and that would improve his mood.

  I called Miss An’gel’s cell phone but had to leave a message. I explained briefly the reason for my call, then rang off. The Ducote sisters spent most of their time doing volunteer work in Athena and the surrounding area. Meetings of various committees and boards kept them busy, so I wasn’t surprised not to get an answer right away. Miss An’gel would return my call as soon as she could.

  In the meantime I pondered how I would spend my evening. Too early yet for dinner, so what to do? Kanesha said the four volumes of Rachel Long’s diary would be returned tomorrow morning, and that would mean a heavy workload. I sighed. I wasn’t eager to plunge back into the one volume I had scanned, but I might as well. The sooner I got through them all, the sooner I might discover a clue to the present-day murder if one existed.

  I went into the den and powered up my laptop. I got comfortable on the sofa and opened up the file I sent myself yesterday. I paged down until I found the last entry I’d read in my office.

  The next entry came three days later.

  The transaction is complete. Celeste thanked me most prettily, and I wished her well, keeping my misgivings to myself. The Good Lord only knew her fate, and I prayed that He would be merciful to her and to Franklin and their babe. I gave her two of my mother-in-law’s dresses and an old woolen cloak of hers as well, in addition to the things I had already provided her during her service to our family. I shall miss her, I must confess, for she has been a cheerful presence in this sad and unhappy house.

  For the next couple of weeks Rachel wrote of daily life during a hard winter. Their stores of food diminished at an alarming rate, and Rachel prayed they would be able to find provisions in town. She longed for the spring and its warmth and for the chance to plant vegetables to sustain them throughout the year.

  On January 27, 1862, Rachel noted the death of Jasper Singletary, “too worn down by illness and despair to linger in this world.” She would pray for his soul, that he had been reunited with his loved ones in Heaven. She made no mention of Franklin and Celeste.

  After that Rachel evidently had little time or energy for daily attention to the diary. Two or three days often passed without any record of her activities. When Rachel did take time to write, she had little to say other than to mention problems with food and other supplies. Often she concluded with the words “and may the Lord provide as He will.”

  The bleakness of life in wartime came through poignantly in these pages. I admired Rachel’s fortitude in facing each day and somehow struggling through. I felt I knew her a little, and I could not see the Rachel I found in these pages as a coldhearted killer—a woman who plotted the deaths of four people in order to help her father-in-law take the land he wanted from a bereaved husband and father.

  She occasionally mentioned her own child, a son of four named after his father and grandfather, Andrew Adalbert Long III. He was a bonny child, she said, and she took comfort in his youth and energy. She sometimes ate little in order that he would have enough, particularly during the cold winter when they had to be careful with their supplies. She longed for her husband’s safe return, and the pain of not knowing either his whereabouts or the state of his health affected her sleep.

  She wrote little of political events or even of news of the war. Her attention centered on the situation at home. I thought perhaps she avoided recording news of the war because she couldn’t bear confiding such sad tidings to her diary. That would make it all seem even more real. I knew that it would have to me.

  I read on.

  In November 1862 rumors spread that the Union Army was headed for Athena, and the town, though evidently panicked, did what it could to prepare. Rachel had already hidden many valuables away from the slaves—those who hadn’t run away by then—and hoped they would be safe. Later she recorded that, though the army did come to Athena and cause considerable damage, they did not penetrate far enough south to find Bellefontaine. The Longs escaped the worst of the Union depredations, unlike the poor townspeople.

  I skimmed after that because there were no substantial entries to read. Even Rachel’s mention of her father-in-law’s passing in September 1863 merited only two sentences. The privations of wartime had grown even worse by then, and I wondered how they managed to survive. I knew Rachel lived for many years after the war, as did her son. I didn’t know about her husband, though, and whether he survived the war.

  I decided to look it up. I did a search on Andrew Adalbert Long, Jr., in the library’s online catalog because I knew the information should be in the record for the collection. The information cam
e up right away. To my surprise I discovered Andrew Junior died in 1863. Before or after his father? I wondered.

  I would have to check the diary to see what Rachel recorded about her husband’s death.

  The house phone rang, and I set my laptop aside to get to my desk where the instrument sat.

  “Good evening, Mr. Harris,” Mrs. Long said. “I hope you won’t mind my calling but I’m afraid curiosity is getting the better of me. Have you been reading the diary?”

  “I don’t mind at all, Your Honor,” I said. “I have been reading, and I have discovered a lot of interesting information.” I wondered how she would react to the news about Jasper Singletary’s great-great-grandmother Celeste.

  “Excellent,” she said. “Can you give me a summary? I have about twenty minutes before I have to leave for a dinner being held in my son’s honor.”

  “Sure,” I said. I gave her a quick, general report about the nature of the entries in the diary. After a pause for breath, I related the strange story of Rachel’s connection with the Singletary family and her attempts to help them.

  “Interesting,” the mayor said. “Perhaps this will stop young Mr. Singletary from making some of these wild claims of his.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “There is more, however.” I told her about Franklin and Celeste.

  When I finished, the mayor’s reaction shocked me.

  She laughed. “Oh, this is priceless. He’s been having a fit to get his hands on these diaries, and now he’s going to be sorry I ever found them. His campaign is in big trouble now.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  How should I respond to the distasteful, gleeful malice I heard in Mrs. Long’s voice? She was making the assumption, I supposed, that Singletary would lose votes if it were known that he was of mixed race. One never knew how voters would react to anything. In the twenty-first century I wondered whether this could be a factor in the race.

  I had to admit, however, that I’d had some of the same thoughts the mayor expressed to me—only I hadn’t been chortling over them.

  Finally I said, “At the beginning you stated that these diaries should be available to the public. I have already discussed the contents of this volume with Chief Deputy Berry. Do you still want the contents publicly available?”

  “By all means,” the mayor said. “The public has a right to know the background of the candidates running for office. Then it’s up to them to decide what’s important.”

  That sounded smugly self-righteous—not to mention self-serving—to me, but I didn’t care to get into an argument with the mayor over it.

  “In that case I will give Mr. Singletary a file of the digitized pages,” I said. “In the event that this could affect his campaign, he should know as soon as possible. I think that’s the only fair thing to do.”

  “Agreed,” Mrs. Long said. “Now I really have to get going. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow. I heard the other books will be back in your office sometime in the morning.”

  The phone clicked in my ear, and I put the receiver back in its cradle. I didn’t like to think so, but I believed that the issue of class had reared its nasty head. The Longs were among the elite in Athena, if not the entire state of Mississippi, whereas Jasper Singletary came from a poor family. The Singletarys had been in Athena for generations, but they didn’t have money or political clout. Mrs. Long might add a third lack to those two: breeding. The Longs considered themselves patricians, and there came with that status a sense of entitlement, at least on their part. That bothered me, but there was nothing I could do to change it.

  I went back to the laptop and searched for a phone number for Jasper Singletary’s campaign headquarters. I didn’t want to go through Kelly Grimes. Instead I thought I should share the file only with the man himself. Number located, I punched it in on the house phone and waited for someone to answer. A harried-sounding woman picked up after five rings.

  I gave her my name and stressed the urgency of my call. “He is interested in this information, and I know he will want to know about it as soon as possible.”

  She promised to pass the message along, but I put down the receiver wondering when Singletary might actually receive the news of my call.

  I should not have doubted the poor woman, as it turned out. Singletary called me about fifteen minutes later, when I had my head stuck in the fridge trying to decide what I wanted for dinner.

  “You have news for me, I hear,” Singletary said after a quick greeting.

  “I do. I would like to send you a file with the scanned pages from the diary,” I said. “I think you’ll find the contents interesting.”

  “Did you find the evidence I need?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I replied. “I really think you need to read this for yourself, rather than have me try to tell it all to you over the phone.”

  Singletary expelled a sharp breath. “All right, then.” He gave me an e-mail address, and I jotted it down.

  “Does anyone else read the mail sent to this address?” I asked. I wanted to be sure that he, and he alone, read this. He might want to think about the contents before he acted upon them.

  “Yes,” he said. “Has anyone else seen this?”

  “No one else has seen it,” I said, “but I did share the contents during conversations with Mrs. Long and with Chief Deputy Berry. I don’t see that there’s any connection to the current murder investigation, but there is family history that you should know about, if you don’t already.”

  He did not respond for several seconds. “Go ahead and send me the file.” He ended the call.

  I speculated that the abrupt hang-up meant he was angry I had talked to Mrs. Long and Kanesha. Well, so be it. I sat down and pulled the computer into my lap. It took less than half a minute to send the file on its way to Jasper Singletary. I powered down the laptop and set it aside. Time for dinner, I decided.

  While I ate the chicken salad Azalea left for me and doled out cat treats to Diesel, I thought about the Singletary family and the source of their hatred for the Longs. I could understand that Franklin and Celeste did not want to tell their children about how father traded land for mother and instead might present the transaction as a nefarious deal arranged by Rachel’s father-in-law. But how could the knowledge that Celeste was once a slave be lost to collective memory?

  The townspeople would surely have known, and given the mind-set of the time, I couldn’t imagine that there wasn’t gossip about the couple. Gossip that would have persisted over the years, at least for a generation or two.

  I hoped Miss An’gel would call soon. In the meantime I had to think of a discreet way to ask her about the Singletary family and what would be considered miscegenation in the family tree. I knew Miss An’gel would not press me for details that I couldn’t share, but I still had to take care with what I said.

  By the time she called the kitchen was clean and Diesel and I were upstairs. I was reading while he snoozed beside me on the bed.

  “Good evening, Miss An’gel. How are you?”

  “Doing fine, Charlie. How are you and that beautiful kitty of yours?”

  “We’re fine, too. Diesel is stretched out beside me napping, though he did perk up when he heard your name.”

  Miss An’gel laughed. “Give him a few rubs on the head for me and Sister. You said you wanted to talk to me about a local family. What’s going on?”

  I gave her a quick précis of the situation with the diaries and the murder of Marie Steverton. “Mrs. Long thought there might be information about the family that could help her son in his election bid. In the one volume I’ve read so far, I haven’t spotted anything.”

  “That boy will probably skate through on the family name,” Miss An’gel said. “I don’t think he’ll do any harm in state government, but he certainly won’t accomplish anything significant.” She sighed. “Young Singletary, on the other
hand, is bright and capable, but he doesn’t have the cachet of a distinguished family like Beck Long. That could hurt his chances.”

  “About the Singletarys,” I said, thankful she had given me a segue to my question, “other than the fact that they have been poor farmers for several generations, is there anything you might know of in their family tree that voters might find, well, objectionable?”

  “What a fascinating question,” Miss An’gel said. “I’m sure there is a story behind it, but I suppose you can’t tell me why you’re asking in such a delicate way.”

  “No, ma’am, I can’t, at least not yet,” I replied.

  “Let me think for a moment.” The line went silent for about fifteen seconds. “No, nothing. Other than bitterness against the Long family over some land deal around the time of the Civil War, I can’t think of anything.”

  “What do you know about that land deal?” I asked.

  “My mother told us the story when Sister and I were young,” Miss An’gel said. “I suppose Mother had it from our father, who had it from his father. Our grandfather was born in 1870, so he would have heard something about it from his father, who fought in the war.” She paused. “The story doesn’t reflect well on the Long patriarch at the time, one of the many Andrews they’ve had in the family; I forget exactly which one. The way Sister and I heard it, Andrew Long had his eye on some land the Singletarys owned and had tried to buy it several times. Early on in the war, Singletary—I think he was a Jasper—fell ill and was desperate for money to feed his family. Long saw his chance, swooped in, and offered the lowest price he could and bought the land. Singletary died right afterwards, I think, and his son had lost some of his best farmland.”

  “Was there anything else about the land deal that you might have heard?” I asked.

  “No, not that I can remember,” Miss An’gel said. “One of the reasons Mother told us was because our father had apparently told her not to do business with the Longs because they’re cheap and always looking to get the most they can for next to nothing.” She laughed. “Don’t you dare tell anyone I told you that, now.”