on, sitting at the small table on which were spread a number of newspaper clippings and a manila folder.
“Yeah, I know you’ll be quiet about it, Stan. Ain’t that I’m ashamed of killin’ him, you want to know true. I ain’t lost one minute’s sleep. He had it comin’. But I don’t need no police.”
“You sure we shouldn’t tell them?”
“I’m sure. They might just let it go. Not give a damn. But they could decide to make sure I went upriver. That ain’t exactly what I had in mind for an old-age pension. Prison stripes and workin’ on a chain gang in the hot sun. I wouldn’t last six months at my age.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “These clippings, the folder? You have something to show me?”
“The folder’s got police reports in it. Told you Jukes would come through. Let me lay some of this on you, Stan. Now just listen. Put it together with what you know, but don’t hold to anything you know. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Think around corners. Figure out what it could be, but don’t hold to that bein’ it till there’s nothing else to hold to but that.”
“All right.”
“These clippings, we got news that the oldest girl, she left town. You remember me telling you that before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She went off to London, England. It’s right here in the society section. Ones that make up this town’s society is about three families. Stilwinds is one of the families. This Stilwind girl goin’ off was five years before the murder of either them other girls, Margret and Jewel. Now we got an old police report here. Jukes didn’t give this one to me right off, but when I read this in the paper about Susan, that was her name, goin’ off to London, it got me to thinkin’. She’s fifteen it says, and it’s a January when she goes. What’s that say to you?”
“It’s winter?”
“That ain’t got a damn thing to do with it. Think, boy. How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Yeah. And what you got to do when the summer’s over?”
“Go to school.”
“Give the little boy a candy cigar. That’s right. Go to school. Now, does what I told you come up different now?”
“She left during school . . . She had to leave.”
“There you go. So I’m thinkin’, she goes off during school-time, and she’s fifteen, and they send her to London, what’s the reason? I figured she was pregnant. That’s what them rich folks do if they got a girl gets knocked up. They send them away to have the baby or they send them away to get rid of it. I thought, well, maybe they just wanted her to be educated in England. It could be that way. Rich folks do that. But high school. All of a sudden, three years or so before she graduates . . . Didn’t sound right.
“So, I say to Jukes. Jukes. Go back to when this gal left and get me the police reports for then.”
“Wouldn’t you want hospital reports? To see if she was pregnant?”
“Good thinkin’, but can’t get ’em. May not even exist now.”
“But why police?”
“Nothin’ says this has anything to do with the police, but I got to go on my gut sometimes. I get to thinkin’, what if some event happened with Susan about then and they want to send her off.”
“But why would the cops care if she’s pregnant?”
“What if it isn’t that she’s pregnant?”
“I’m confused now.”
“That was just my guess, but I had to guess another way too. Maybe somethin’ happened with her that was in the police files. Anything. Like she got into some kind of robbin’, and her daddy wanted to send her off. Delinquent stuff.”
“I guess it could be that.”
“But it wasn’t. It’s like both ideas I had come together. See, Stan, the old police chief, he kept all his records just like you’re supposed to do. Figure I was him, I would too. Things can come back on you. My figure is the chief, Rowan was his name, his idea of justice was whatever he wanted to dole out. Colored usually got justice right then and there from him. Same with some cracker. It’s the rich folks get judges, when that’s even bothered with.”
“What are you buildin’ up to, Buster?”
Buster opened the folder, took out some pages.
“This here is written by the chief himself. Just his notes. Says: ‘Susan Ann Stilwind came in tonight and said someone had been messing with her. I asked her who, and she said it was her family. She said she didn’t want to say, but she wanted to be taken away from there. I said, who in your family, and she still didn’t say. She hadn’t been here more than a few minutes talking to me when her daddy, Mr. Stilwind, come in. He said she was going around spreading lies. What she was saying wasn’t true. She was saying it because he had run off the boy that did it to her and now she was ashamed and so mad she wanted him to look bad by saying what she was saying. I didn’t ask her anymore. I told them it might be a good idea if she didn’t stay home anymore. That she should go off somewhere for a time. Mr. Stilwind said he’d make arrangements. She broke down crying and wouldn’t let him touch her, but she went off with him after cussing me.’
“Then you read the society pages, and she’s goin’ off to study in England. This was in the paper a week after this chief dated his entry. She was probably already gone when that word hit the paper.”
“Her father did it?” I asked.
“Chief thought so. Says for her daddy not to have her at home anymore, and to send her off. What’s that say to you? Chief’s way of solvin’ the problem. Send her off so the old man can’t do it to her no more, and she’s able to have the baby in privacy.”
“I guess the chief wasn’t all bad.”
“How do you figure? He was protectin’ the old man more than the girl. Sent her off so the old man doesn’t get embarrassed, it doesn’t hurt the town. He wanted to help that girl, he’d have looked into the matter and done somethin’. Only reason he wrote it down and kept it is if somethin’ came back on him. That way he could show he tried to do something about the matter. Wouldn’t be accused of sweeping it under the rug.
“Better yet, he could use that file to make sure Stilwind didn’t push him around, money or no money, ’cause that’s what Stilwind does. He pushes people around with his money. Other thing. Chief retired not long after Jewel Ellen was murdered.”
“Susan leaving and Jewel Ellen dying are connected to the chief?”
“They’re connected to the Stilwind family and the chief. Remember them letters? I believe Jewel Ellen was pregnant by him, like the other’n. The old man sent one off, but maybe this one was determined to talk.”
“So he murdered her.”
Buster nodded. “Could be. I know the chief bought a nice little house down by the river. Gets a new car every year or so. All this on a lawman’s retirement. Jukes done told me all that.”
“But if he was paid off, why would he leave the notes in the file for anyone to see?”
“ ’Cause he never actually went to Stilwind and said pay me off. Stilwind just did. Didn’t want chief to say what he knew. Stilwind may not have known a report was written down and filed, but he might have feared it was. Chief was willing to take the money without argument and Stilwind was willin’ to pay it ’cause that’s how he solves his problems. With money.
“As for the notes. That’s all they are, notes. They don’t really say Stilwind did somethin’ to her. But it sure makes it look that way. He left them there so if things come back on him, he wouldn’t have taken them with him when he left, to maybe use as blackmail. He could say, ‘They’re right in the files. And you know, it does look like he might have done somethin’ to that girl. Didn’t pick up on that then. Should’a, but missed it.’ Hear what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes, sir. I think so. But what about Margret?”
“Maybe Jewel Ellen told Margret, and Stilwind found out. Jewel got mad, blurted it out. Could’a told him she liked girls, not men. That would hurt his pride even more. Could have said she and Margret were gonna raise the baby. He wouldn’t want that. Wouldn’t want a granddaughter by his own daughter runnin’ around. That’s bad for business.”
“Could he kill his own daughter?”
