The House of Memory (Pluto's Snitch Book 2) Page 25

  “I expect nothing less of those girls,” Minnie said, playing along. She knew something was very wrong. I suspected Maude or Jefferson Granger had already paid her a call, hurling accusations about Zelda’s involvement in Camilla’s disappearance. Thank goodness Minnie could truthfully say that Zelda had been home all last night and couldn’t possibly be involved. That worked to our advantage.

  But where was Reginald? Now I was fearing the worst.

  I left the keys to David’s car with his assistant, and I walked to the courthouse. The heat was like a bludgeon, forcing me to seek any shade as I made my way the few short blocks to the courthouse. The Greystone Hotel was nearby, close enough that I could check there next. Zelda was also looking for Reginald, and perhaps she’d had more luck.

  The sheriff’s office was easy to find. I heard loud male voices and a chorus of laughter. It stopped instantly when I walked into the open doorway. Men in uniform disbanded and went to desks and work. A dreaded woman had invaded the inner sanctum of the male law officer.

  “May I help you?” a uniformed man asked politely.

  “Have you seen my friend Reginald Proctor?”

  He nodded. “He was here a few hours ago. What a character.” He grinned. “He sure can tell a story.”

  “He can indeed. Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He was going on about some missing girls. Said they were somehow connected to the state mental hospital. That was news to us, and he didn’t have any proof. We’ve had some girls go missing, but none of them had ever been sent to the crazy house.” The amusement was gone from the man’s face, though he still smiled.

  Reginald was playing with fire. “He gets some wild ideas.” I forced a chuckle. “Did he mention where he might be going?”

  “Didn’t say specifically. But he met up with a friend here, that private investigator Jason Kuddle. Used to be a top-notch copper before he got tied up with that doxy and went to work as a gumshoe. Kuddle was talking his ear off when they left. Looked like they were long-lost friends. Glad to see the backside of Kuddle, in here acting like he was the only one could find a missing girl. Lording it over us all that he makes his own time and does what he pleases.”

  “What’s a doxy? Is that another word for a flapper?” Kuddle looked like the kind of man who’d have a flapper in every little town.

  “Fancy woman.” The deputy had the grace to be a little embarrassed. “Flapper had nothing to do with what his girlfriend was selling. More like the oldest profession in the world. And Jason was buying it on the clock. That’s what got him fired.”

  “I see.” My immediate reaction was to back away from a clearly improper topic. All the men watched to see if I would be offended, a delicate flower of the South who couldn’t hear plain talk. Little did they know my real ambitions in life. “Does that woman have a name and a place I can find her?”

  The officer laughed out loud, drawing looks from the others in the room. “Her name’s Martha. And her place of employment is not any place you want to be seen. You’ll ruin your reputation, and your daddy would be mad at me for sending you there.”

  “My daddy is dead, and so is my husband. War hero, if you want to know. Now I need to talk with Martha. I’ll worry about my own reputation.” I said it all softly, and while I clearly hadn’t won any friends, I seemed to have gained a tiny measure of respect.

  “Go to Big Buster’s Bar. She works out of there. They won’t let you in the door, but maybe she’ll come out.” He stepped back from the counter.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

  “Hey, your friend dropped his car key.” He reached below the counter and brought out the key to Zelda’s car. “Give it to him for me?”

  “Ab-so-lute-ly.” I did my best to sound truly modern.

  I found the car parked in the shade two blocks from the courthouse. The mud had been washed away, and, from what I could tell, there was no damage. But where was Reginald? I’d passed a diner, and I went back and ordered a sandwich and cup of coffee. It was past midday, and I had to eat or risk collapsing. I also thought a waitress might be more forthcoming with information than anyone else I could ask.

  When the young woman put my food in front of me at the counter, I asked for directions to Big Buster’s Bar.

  “Not a place you should go,” she said, busy setting flatware and napkins in front of me.

  “I need to talk with someone. It’s important.”

  She gave me the directions to the bar that specialized in women rented by the hour, gambling, and illegal rum. “They’ll cut your throat as soon as look at you. The law don’t mess with them because they’re so vicious.”

  I’d wondered that a deputy knew about a local prostitution business and did nothing about it. But liquor was illegal, too, and no one lifted a finger. I was quickly learning that the activities wealthy men indulged in, illegal or not, were frequently overlooked by the law. “Thanks.” I paid the check and left, the sandwich sitting like a lump in my stomach, much like my concern for my missing partner.

  I found the tavern easily enough, and was stopped at the door and refused entrance. When I asked for Martha by name, the burly doorman said he would send her out. After ten minutes of broiling in the sun, the door opened, and I was ushered into a room so dark I stumbled into a chair.

  “Over there.” The stout man pointed toward a table in a corner, where a pretty woman wearing too much makeup waited.

  She was in her forties, and she’d gone to great care to hide that fact. I’d expected her to wear a nightgown or some pretty lingerie, but she wore a plain skirt and blouse. I didn’t have time for the niceties, so I jumped in. “I hear you’re friends with Jason Kuddle. I need to find him.”

  “Jason can’t be found unless he wants to be found.” She wasn’t contrary, just amused.

  “He was with my friend, a tall, dark, good-looking man with a mustache, gray suit. They stopped by here.” I made it a fact.

  “Snappy dresser. Yeah, they came by here but left. That was hours ago. Said they had a lead on one of those missing girls. They were in a big hurry, headed across the river.”

  This was at least progress. “Was her name Ritter Ames?”

  “Yeah, that’s the name. That girl must have a hooch of gold, all her gentleman callers looking for her. What do you want with a missing girl?”

  “Her mother wants her to come home. If I can find her, I hope to convince her to return to the farm. Thanks for your help. I need to move along.”

  “Everybody’s in a rush these days. Flying around in cars, using telephones. Nothing gets finished any faster; folks just stay busier.”

  I felt the same way, but I had other fish to fry. “Did they say where Ritter Ames lives?”

  “Somewhere on the road to Prattville. Lucky the weather’s good, or crossing that river’s a problem. The state’s building a bridge, but it’s not done. Gotta take the ferry.”

  “Can you remember anything more, a specific address?”

  “Honey, you got it bad for one of those men. I’d say the cake-eater. He’s a purdy thing, all right.”

  “Reginald is my friend. And my partner in a business. It’s not about romance.”

  The humor left her face. “You got a business. A woman with a business other than selling her jelly roll.” She studied me for a long moment. “Okay, let me think back to what was said.”

  The bartender brought us two neat shots of whiskey, and though I didn’t particularly want to drink, I knocked mine back. I managed not to cough, but my eyes watered.

  “You’re a sport, aren’t you?” She swallowed the alcohol without even flinching. “Apparently it’s about a mile past the river, a dirt road called Canner’s Fork on the left. Maybe another mile more, and a farm on the right. That’s what Jason was saying anyway. But then again, he said they’d be back by now. Men. Never on time. Of course, the ferry might be out of commission, too. If they veer off course, they can run aground in the shallows, and no telling how lo
ng it would take to get them towed back in the channel.”

  “Thank you, Martha.”

  “No thanks necessary. Watch your back. Someone’s killing young women. Just ’cause you own a business doesn’t mean they won’t hurt you.” Her gaze was unfathomable as she knocked back another shot of whiskey.

  Her point was well taken.

  The ferry crossing was almost more than I could complete. Driving Zelda’s car onto the barge terrified me. Driving off the barge was easier, and I had recovered my nerve by the time I got to the farmhouse where I hoped the Ames family lived. I idled toward the homestead, taking in the details, trying to do what Reginald did so well. He could read a scene or a person effortlessly. I hoped I would soon be able to ask him face-to-face what he’d ascertained here.

  The farmhouse was pleasant, freshly painted, set among rows of cotton that would soon be ready to harvest. When the bolls popped open, the long rows would be filled with workers, mostly black, stooped over, picking the cotton and stuffing it into the long canvas sacks that stretched behind each picker. It was hot, backbreaking work.

  I parked in the shade of an elm and was met at the door by a pretty woman with deep-red hair. She’d obviously been crying.

  “Mrs. Ames, I’m Raissa James. I’m helping with the search for your daughter.”

  She burst into tears and pulled up her apron to hide her face.

  I felt tears start in my own eyes, but I kept my composure. “May I make you some coffee?” If I could invite myself inside and get busy, she might be more willing to talk.

  She pushed the screen open, and I stepped into a front parlor lovingly maintained. Paintings of sun-burnished landscapes hung on the walls, along with treasured china plates. The smell of something baking came from the kitchen, a pound cake if my nose was accurate. I wasn’t the best person in a kitchen, but the stove was stoked, and I put a kettle on for the coffee. Even I could work a coffeepot.

  Mrs. Ames took a chair, elbows on the kitchen table, and hid her face in her hands. Tears leaked through her fingers onto the wood. I didn’t know how Jason Kuddle did this kind of work every day—finding lost children, hunting for runaways, sitting with the victims of dastardly crimes.

  “I know two men have been here today asking many of the same questions I need to ask. I apologize for putting you through this twice.”

  She looked up slowly. “No one has been here. Not since the police left two days ago when my daughter disappeared. John, my husband, has gone to town to see if there’s been news. He doesn’t think the law is trying very hard to find our girl. Other young women have gone missing, and nothing has been done. One was found dead.” She fought to maintain control. “No one cares because we don’t have money, but the law’s supposed to protect everyone. Even the poor.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” This had to be wrong. Martha had given me perfect directions to this farm, the Ames farm. This was the Ames farm, and this woman’s daughter was missing. Yet she hadn’t talked with Kuddle and Reginald.

  “My associates would have been by maybe three hours earlier?”

  “No one has been here.”

  The directions Martha had given me were dead accurate. She wouldn’t know this unless Jason Kuddle had told her.

  I tried once more. “Could you have missed them somehow?”

  “I haven’t left the house except to gather eggs in the chicken coop. I would have heard a vehicle.”

  I poured the hot water and brewed the coffee, puzzling over this strange turn of events. Kuddle and Reginald wouldn’t have come all this way to embrace defeat.

  “Can you tell me a little about your daughter?” I found a small pitcher of fresh cream in an icebox on the back porch and put it on the table. The wonders of electricity hadn’t yet found their way to this farm. The sugar bowl was already in place.

  “Ritter has a fanciful imagination. She liked to play in the shade of the mimosa grove right down the road. There aren’t any other children around here, but she entertained herself.”

  “She’s fifteen, right?”

  “Yes, but still such a child. I think that comes from so much time alone, without brothers and sisters. John and I tried for more children, but we weren’t blessed that way.”

  Even innocent fifteen-year-old girls knew about flappers and the dawning of the modern era. “She attends school?” Schoolgirls swapped tales of big-city wonders and delights. They fed the fever in one another. A mother might see innocence because that was what she wanted to see.

  “She loves school, and she’s a wonderful student. The teachers tell her she should be a teacher. That’s what she wants.”

  “Did she ask to go to town? Maybe to visit with her school friends?”

  Mrs. Ames considered the question as she stirred sugar and cream into the coffee I placed before her. “She didn’t seem to care much about town. She was happy here, with me. That will change, I know, as she gets older and wants more of her own life. She’ll want to be with young people. Young men. It’s the natural way of life. But she wasn’t interested. Not yet.”

  “Did she mention anyone strange or unusual around the farm?” I kept busy at the stove and sink. Mrs. Ames seemed to find it easier to talk when I wasn’t staring at her.

  “A few days ago a man in a fancy car came by and asked her questions. I told her not to talk to him, to run home if she saw him again. She promised she would, and my daughter never went back on her word, so I didn’t worry.” She started to cry. “I should have worried. I should have sent John to kill that devil. I know in my heart that’s who took her.”

  “When did she see this man in a fancy car?”

  “The morning she disappeared. She told me about him when she came back in for some breakfast. She ate and said she was going back out to play at her cousin’s house down the road. She never came home.” Mrs. Ames began to cry. “She’s my baby.”

  I tried to bring her back, help her focus. “This is very important, ma’am. Did she describe the car?”

  “She said it was fancy and a pretty green.”

  I reached across the table and patted her arm. “You’ve been very helpful. These details are so important. This is how we’ll find the person who took your daughter. Is there anything else?”

  My encouraging words seemed to help. Mrs. Ames wiped her face and looked at me, her eyes widening. I was a fright, I knew. I’d been up all night and most of the day, running on nerves. I hadn’t had a chance to clean up or change clothes, but her reaction made me step back. “What is it?”

  She pointed at my chest. “That pin. Where did you get it?”

  I’d forgotten the pretty hat pin I’d found in the chair at Bryce. My fingers went to it instinctively, and I pulled it out of the placket.

  She took it and examined it closely. “This was my mother’s, a gift to her from the governor’s wife. My mother was a cook in the Louisiana governor’s mansion when she was young, before she married. She gave the pin to me, and I gave it to Ritter on her fifteenth birthday, so she would know she owned one beautiful thing, and that one day she’d have clothes and hats to wear it with.”

  I closed her fingers over the pin, absorbing the full implication of what this meant. “I’m glad I could return this.” Ritter Ames had been at Bryce Hospital. Or else the person who abducted her had been there. I wanted to believe it was the young woman, and that she’d left the pin deliberately, a clue for someone to find her.

  “Where did you get it?” Mrs. Ames asked again. She grasped my hand and held on.

  What I said next would affect Mrs. Ames for the rest of her life, but I couldn’t lie. Not to a mother. “At Bryce Hospital. I found it there.”

  “The mental hospital?” Fear followed her confusion. “How?”

  “I don’t know, but I promise you I’ll hunt for your daughter.”

  The connection I’d long sought between the missing girls and the hospital was undeniably clear. Someone at Bryce was involved in these abductions. Were these young women, taken fr
om rural places and people who couldn’t afford to fight back, being used as experiments, then turned into prostitutes? There was no doubt that the dead girls who’d visited me were dressed to look provocative and alluring. Pamela DuMond had been assaulted and murdered and left dead, dressed like a flapper. Had her brain been damaged so she couldn’t defend herself?

  I thought of the poor drowned girl Cheryl, who was such a mental child that she believed in a magical kingdom under the water. What had driven her to the river? And had she truly drowned accidentally, or was she murdered because of what had been done to her?

  “Do you have a telephone?” I asked. I had to get in touch with Zelda and Judge Sayre. If Ritter Ames and Joanne Pence were still at Bryce, still alive and undamaged, they had to be found immediately. Before Dr. Perkins could operate on them.

  “No. The lines aren’t up all the way out here. Not electric or telephone.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Tell me what you know.” She clutched my hand. “Please.”

  “I promise you I’ll do whatever I can to find your daughter. Do you have a photograph?”

  She went to the mantel and picked up a framed picture. “It’s the only one I have.” She held the photograph of a smiling young woman with kind eyes and a generous smile.

  I hated to take it, but it would be useful. “I’ll return it.”

  She gave it to me, crying silently.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I know something.”

  “She’s our only child. She’s a good girl.”

  I’d come here hoping to learn when and how Ritter Ames had disappeared, but that didn’t matter now. The only thing that mattered was finding her before she disappeared forever and became another one of the lost girls.

  Grasping the photograph, I hurried to the car and headed back the way I’d come. The ferry crossing was as fearsome as it had been before, but I had another, larger fear pushing me back to Montgomery.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Father called the Tuscaloosa sheriff’s office.” Zelda stubbed out her cigarette. “They’re sending a dozen deputies to the mental hospital. If that girl’s at Bryce, they’ll find her. Nothing bad will happen to her.”