Roots of Murder (44 page)

He sat silently, then he suddenly bolted up and said, “I've got to leave. I need to think about this.”

“I'm sorry,” Nell tried to say again, but he was out the door. Now it was her turn to sit silently, wondering if she would ever see him again, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Then she remembered the haunted look that had passed over Hattie Jacobs' face. “No, I can't change the past,” she said softly to herself. She took the uneaten sandwiches to the break room, giving them to Pam and Jacko.

She went back to her office and again just sat. Then she couldn't stand staring at the wall, so she began looking over her desk for anything to distract her. She tried willing the phone to ring, for Harold Reed to call back so she could forge ahead with the murder story. Or for the sheriff to call and say that the Jones boys did it, to keep her demons all in one neat package. Or for Aaron to call back and … and what? Say he understood why she was doing what she was doing? Was that even possible? But the phone didn't ring.

She picked up the letters from Alma Smyth and started reading the next one, but it was just another listing of the young men she had an interest in or who were interested in her. Nell stumbled over the name of Bo Tremble as a possible suitor, but he was quickly dismissed. She skimmed the next letter but it was more of the same. Then she started flipping through the envelopes, glancing at the postmarks to see if she could find anything close to the dates of Pelican Property and Alma Smyth's part in it. Nell suddenly stopped flipping; her brain registered that something had changed. She paged back through the envelopes to see if she could discern any differences. It was the return address. The handwriting was the same, but the name and address had changed. Alma J. Smyth had married. Starting in 1959, her name was Alma J. Dupree.

“Oh, God, no,” Nell said aloud as she stared at the envelope. Alma Smyth was already Alma Dupree when she had used her maiden name as one of the owners of Pelican Property. This brought Andre Dupree closer to the murders. Hattie Jacobs had said he was one of the men burning the cross on her lawn, one of the men who had told her Michael, Dora, and Ella would never return. Just because he hadn't been present at the murders—or in the pictures—didn't mean he wasn't an accessory.

Now her phone chose to ring. Nell snatched it up, hoping it was Harold Reed. She had to share this monstrous information with someone else.

Her caller was Alma Dupree, almost as if willed into being by the ghosts of her past. “I think we have some things we need to talk about,” she informed Nell. “Can you please come over here?”

Nell was completely flustered at having the damning letters on her desk and now the woman herself on the phone. “Mrs. Dupree. It might be hard for me to get away …”

“Please. This is very important. I'll be here all afternoon waiting for you. We're at 12 Wisteria.”

The phone went dead before Nell could think of anything else to say.

Before she had gathered her thoughts, it rang again. This time she cautiously picked it up. Harold Reed.

“It's about time,” she barked at him. Then immediately added, “I'm sorry, it's just that a lot has happened in the last few hours.” As coherently as she could, she explained what she had learned about Pelican Property and its
all-too
-close connection to the Dupree empire, ending with, “And now she wants me to come over there and talk to her.”

Aaron had obviously told his mother what Nell had revealed.

“But this was before you made the connection between Alma Smyth and Alma Dupree?” Harold asked. “Are you going to see her?”

“How can I, knowing what I know?” Nell answered.

“Would you consider wearing a wire?” he asked.

“A wire? Haven't I destroyed their lives enough without another betrayal?”

“This is murder, Nell,” he reminded her. “And murder not just in the past, but from here and now.”

“I know,” Nell admitted. The innocence of the son wouldn't mitigate the guilt of the father, much as she wanted to spare Aaron another blow. Nell also desperately wanted one more chance to meet Marcus for beers at Joe's. She made her decision. “Tell me what I need to do.”

Harold asked her to get to his office as soon as she could. He'd set things up on his end.

Nell found Dolan, who had just returned from purchasing new office furniture. She told him they were holding the front page; Pam already had one on her computer, the safe one with the election rundown and Marcus's obituary. If Nell didn't get back, or if they got behind, he should go ahead with that one. As explanation, she told him she had to go to the DA's office and might be there for a while.

Harold was waiting for her when she arrived, immediately rushing her into a small office. “We're working to verify the identifications Hattie Jacobs made, but so far all we've got are tombstones. Someone from back then is still alive enough to have ordered the murder of Marcus Fletcher and the attack on your building. I want that person,” he told Nell.

“But Andre Dupree is confined to a wheelchair, barely able to talk,” Nell said.

“That doesn't mean he couldn't orchestrate events. Or that he was going to sit and watch everything he worked for in his life be taken from him and his family.”

“You may get nothing more than Alma Dupree offering me tea and telling me that I've upset her son and maybe I could consider not printing whatever it was he found so disagreeable.”

“We might well get that, but she asked to talk to you, so she might be offering some kind of deal which we can use as leverage. She may let something slip. You're more likely to get anything than any of us. The minute we go in, they're going to be barricaded behind a wall of lawyers,” Harold explained. “I don't think you're in danger. She may be just a little old lady offering you tea and a small bribe on behalf of her husband.”

The door to the office opened and the woman deputy came in, carrying the wire.

“Are you willing to do this?” he asked Nell directly. It was her last chance to say no.

“I'm ready,” she affirmed.

Harold stepped out, and the woman deputy put the wire on Nell. Good thing it's winter, she thought; the bulky sweater she was wearing was a much better concealment than a light
T-shirt
.

Back in the parking lot, sitting in her car, Nell suddenly thought, I can't be playing cops and robbers, doing bizarre things like wearing a wire to talk to the mother of a man I … I saw hints of possibility in. And whatever happens—such as Mrs. Dupree asking me if my intentions towards her son are honorable—I'll have an audience for it.

Wisteria Lane was located in the vast tract of property Andre Dupree had developed. It was in the secluded part; only people going here would travel this far back.

The house itself was a mansion, with a sweeping view into the bay and a lawn that could only be kept at its level of perfection by constant attention and the sweat of hired help. Nell hoped the wire could transmit the distance covered by this immense lawn. In this neighborhood, it wouldn't take long for a neighbor to spot an
out-of
-place blue van. Nell had a picture of someone calling the cops on the cops. She slowly drove up the long driveway, looking at the house almost as if in a dream. In some other world, she might be coming here to meet Aaron's mother as a possible
daughter-in
-law. A world that was gone.

Nell parked her car, not recently washed, and she noted how out of place it looked in front of the huge house.

She rang the doorbell and was surprised when Alma Dupree herself answered. Nell would have expected at least a maid, if not a formal butler. The woman's bearing was regal and her face showed faint echoes of the beauty she must have been when she was younger. The clothes she was wearing were tasteful and expensive, set off by subdued but equally expensive jewelry. She was tall, around Nell's height, her back still erect and proud.

“I'm Nell McGraw,” Nell said.

“Thank you for honoring my request. Please come in.” Alma Dupree didn't introduce herself, as if it was obvious who she was. “Let's go back to the sun porch; Andre doesn't like it when he can't see me.”

She led Nell through a large formal living room with antique furniture that looked more for show than sitting. Nell's guess was proven correct in the next room, furnished with deep leather couches and chairs, still expensive but looking like someone occasionally sat in them rather than just walking by. From there they crossed a dining room, with a table that could easily sit twelve and a chandelier that probably cost more than Nell's car when it was new. The kitchen was all
marble-topped
counters, the
copper-bottom
pots and pans gleaming as if they were never used. The help sweated inside as well as outside. Alma Dupree then led her into an enclosed porch with wide windows and several skylights. The room was lush with plants, small trees that reached almost to the tall ceiling.

Hattie Jacobs' farm had bought a lot. From what Nell could see, happiness wasn't included in the deal.

Seated in one corner was a hunched old man Nell assumed to be Andre Dupree. His resemblance to his son was faint, lost in disease and age. Looped under his nose was a line going to an oxygen tank. His head barely turned when they entered and he made no attempt to speak; the only sound was the labored hiss of his breathing.

“Please sit down,” Alma Dupree told Nell, though it came out as an instruction. “Would you like coffee or tea?”

Nell dutifully sat. Even on the
so-called
porch, the furniture was far better than anything she had in her house. Or probably ever would have.

The offer of coffee or tea was the thinnest veil, put on to convey this was a polite visit. Alma sat down across from Nell and said, “I hear you're making claims we cheated people out of their property.”

She was blunt. Nell answered her bluntly. “The records were obviously changed. Entries crossed over, making it seem like people who had paid their property tax were delinquent.”

“Then that should have been between them and the tax office. Why drag us into it?”

“Because you bought a great deal of the property taken from people,” Nell told her.

“That's not true,” Alma Dupree retorted. “Andre bought most of his holdings from a group of white men, some development company called … oh, I forget what it was called.”

She said it easily, the lie, as if it had been repeated enough to become truth.

“Pelican Property,” Nell supplied. “Owned by five men and one woman. Tell me, Mrs. Dupree, what was your maiden name?”

She stared at Nell for several seconds, then covered by saying, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Nell revised her guess about Alma Dupree. She had assumed she'd been a dutiful wife of the time, little aware of what her husband was doing, or, even if she was aware, powerless to do more than find rationalizations for her silence and obeisance. Maybe those were both true, but also present was the fierceness of a woman who would do anything to protect her family.

“It was probably a clever ploy for the time,” Nell mused. “The law would never take a hard look at what the men who controlled Pelican Bay were doing to make their money.”

“What are you implying?”

“One of the owners of Pelican Property was Alma Smyth, spelled with a
Y
, which was your maiden name,” Nell said. Then she added, “Your husband was hiding behind your skirts, Mrs. Dupree.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” she retorted coldly.

“I'm sorry, but I do. You were very powerful back then, but in the passing years things have changed. A harsh glance from the Dupree family can no longer rewrite history.”

Alma Dupree sat up straight and stared at Nell. “You don't understand, do you? If they wanted to keep their land, they could have kept it. They just weren't strong enough. That's not my fault.”

“It's not your fault you took advantage of a system that would never believe a black person over a white one? That there was no law or even moral decency to stop you?” Nell threw back at her.

“If you fight hard enough you win. They didn't fight hard enough,” she said dismissively.

“They didn't have your weapons, all the power packed into the bigotry and hate of the era.”

“Please, spare me your politically correct view of history.”

“I will. Let's see if you can
fight
hard enough to stop the onslaught of both press and legal action coming your way,” Nell told her, suspecting she wouldn't much like a battle of true equals.

Alma Dupree tried another track. “Do you know what this will do to us? To Aaron? To Desiree? To our grandchildren? Why punish them?”

“Because the children and the grandchildren of the people you stole from are still suffering. They could have started their lives with the wealth from their land, but instead they started with nothing. Why did they deserve to be punished?”

“You are determined to go ahead with your vendetta, aren't you? I was prepared to make you a generous offer.”

“Restitution to those you cheated?” Nell shot back.

Alma Dupree started coldly at her. “We can make your life very difficult, Mrs. McGraw.” Whatever façade she had managed until now was gone, her face showing arctic fury.

“The Jones brothers are in jail,” Nell lied. “Who else do you get to hunt people down and then bludgeon to death?”

“First you accuse me of theft and now murder? I don't understand what Aaron ever saw in you.”

Fight ice with fire, Nell thought. She said, “Buzz Brown wasn't as careful as you wanted him to be. We found the pictures of Michael Walker, Dora Ellischwartz, and Ella Carr being murdered. You're in one of them.”