Murder on the Cape Fear (6 page)

I picked up Captain Pettigrew’s letter, slipped it into my purse, and followed Jon out. I didn’t have to pack an overnight bag, I kept clothes and toiletries at Jon’s. I locked the door securely behind me. Patsy and Jimmy wouldn’t be able to get in, but that was Melanie’s problem, and I have to confess I just didn’t care. I was with Jon. We needed a bit of peace and quiet. There hadn’t even been time to tell Melanie about Jon’s accident at the Captain’s house.

On the drive to Wrightsville Beach, I called Binkie. “Change of plans. We’re having dinner at Jon’s. Can you drive out?” When he accepted with pleasure, I said, “Good. We’ll stop for fresh catch and grill out on the deck. I have something to show you.”

“
Now this is what I call heaven,” I told Jon, Binkie, and Aunt Ruby. We were sitting on Jon’s deck, the fragrant smell of mesquite smoke wafting off the grill. Jon lives in a salmon pink house that backs up to the Intracoastal Waterway on the north end of Wrightsville Beach. The house is built on pilings sunk in the sand and the deck extends a few feet out over the water so you feel like you are floating. From a nest in tall grasses, a white egret watched us warily.

I love Jon’s house; it is sparse and clean, uncluttered, with high-gloss wood floors that feel smooth and warm under my bare feet and are wonderful for dancing. His furniture was selected with an eye for comfort, everything capacious and deeply padded, his bed oversized and designed by someone who knew people did more than sleep in their beds. That thought brightened my spirits and I looked forward to bedtime.

I was sprawled in the lounge while Jon manned the grill. Binkie and Aunt Ruby looked relax and had a glow about them. I wondered about their love life. Do people in their seventies still make love? I looked at the two of them, so happy together, and thought: I sure hope so.

“
What happened at the police station?” I asked them.

Aunt Ruby answered, “They’re keeping the briefcase and all the contents. They had his papers spread out on a table but wouldn’t let him touch a single document. Just wanted to know if anything was missing.”

Jon turned from the grill. “And was anything missing?”

Binkie frowned. “Only one thing that I’m sure of. I don’t recall every piece of paper that was in that briefcase. Would anyone?”

“
But what about the envelope that you said FedEx had delivered just as you were leaving your house to go to Two Sisters?” I asked.

Binkie nodded. “That is the only item I can positively say was not there. A large white plastic padded envelope. Gone!”

I leaned back in the lounge. “So the murderer took it. That is what he wanted. What a shame we don’t know what it contained.”

“
Oh, but I do know what it contained,” Binkie said.

“
Well, what?” Jon and I asked together.

“
A journal. A very old journal. We got to Two Sisters a little early yesterday. I had no idea so many people would attend. I thought I’d be sitting there, whiling away time. So I opened the envelope and removed the contents. When I saw it was a journal, I thought I’d keep it with me and peruse it during lulls in the book signing. I shoved the envelope back into the briefcase, and that is when my first guest appeared. After that, we were busy, as you know, and I completely forgot about the journal.”

“
Where is it?” I almost shouted. “If I am right, someone wanted that journal badly enough to kill for it. Somehow he knew about the envelope and he grabbed that, possibly not knowing it had been opened. The envelope was padded, you say? He might not have known the difference.”

Binkie grinned. “Yes, the flap was that self-stick kind so that it resealed itself as I was handling it. I placed the journal on a nearby book shelf with other books. And since Two Sisters has been sealed by the police until further notice, I am assuming the journal is still securely locked inside the bookstore. The police would have assumed it was part of the stock, if they even noticed it.”

Aunt Ruby leaned forward. “We’ll call Cathy Stanley and ask her to let us know the minute the police permit her to reopen. Then we will all hurry over there and collect that journal. I, for one, want to see what it contains.”

“
So do I,” I said.

“
Now wait a minute,” Jon said. “That might be dangerous. We ought to turn it over to the police.”

“
Not without examining it first,” Binkie said. “It was sent to me and I want a good look at it before I release it to anyone.”

“
Do you happen to remember the return address?” I asked.

Binkie looked bewildered. “I do not remember. I do recall clearly that I had to sign for it. But people often send me historic documents to examine. That is not unusual. Oh, wait a minute, it might have been from New York.”

Jon said thoughtfully, “But I’ll bet no one has been killed for one of those historic documents.”

“
That’s where you are wrong,” Binkie said.

Jon raised the lid on the grill. “Fire’s ready. Nice hot ashes.” And he lifted grouper fillets with tongs and set them on the grill.

I reached for my iced tea, and said, “Speaking of historic documents, I have a treasure for you, Binkie.” And I handed him Captain Pettigrew’s letter. “He wrote it to his mother when she was in Washington, visiting Rose Greenhow who was under house arrest for espionage.”

As Binkie examined the pages, I gazed out over the waterway. It was that peaceful time of evening when folks were preparing their dinners or dressing to go out. Few powerboats cruised the waterway. Waterfowl had reclaimed the marshes in their absence. The setting sun painted the golden marshes a color that was almost coral. And the water shimmered with reddish-gold highlights.

Binkie handled the pages as carefully as I had. “This is indeed valuable. You must turn it over to the Cape Fear Museum or to the main library’s North Carolina Room. Their collection includes a few letters from Captain Pettigrew, and I know they will welcome this addition. Do you suppose there are any others tucked away somewhere in the Captain’s house?”

“
Great minds,” I said with a laugh. “I was thinking the same thing. Captain Pettigrew had a little sister named Lacey. He refers to her in the letter. I think it was she who hid this letter in the back of the cupboard, tucked it inside a coil of rope for safekeeping. It’s something a child would do. And it has been there for a century and a half.”

Jon turned, tongs in hand. “The grouper is ready. Another minute for the vegetables.” He plated the grouper on a large serving platter and set it on the grill’s cover to keep it warm. “I’ve seen the plaque to Rose Greenhow on Third Street countless times so I know she was buried at Oakdale Cemetery with full military honors, but how was it that she died in Wilmington?”

“
The tale of Mrs. Greenhow’s adventures and tragic death are stranger than fiction,” Binkie replied. “From house arrest, Mr. Pinkerton transferred her to the Old Capitol Prison. But Mrs. Greenhow had friends in high places, extending to members of Lincoln’s cabinet. She was said to have been a most attractive and charming hostess. Therefore, she was much too popular and incendiary a figure to be tried formally. A hearing was held during which she declared it was not her fault that men in positions of trust blathered freely into the ear of the first pretty woman they came upon. The judge basically washed his hands of the entire incident and banished her to Richmond.

“
Later, Jefferson Davis enlisted her for a mission to England and France as a propagandist for the Southern cause. England’s official position regarding our civil conflict was one of neutrality, but their textile mills were in desperate need of the South’s cotton, thus motivating them to find ways to circumvent neutrality. English shipping companies were the owners of most of the blockade runners. It was in England’s economic interest to ensure the free flow of trade.”

It never ceased to amaze me how Binkie could make history sound as real as events of today. I hung on his every word, as did Jon. And Aunt Ruby gazed at him adoringly.

Binkie continued, “Mrs. Greenhow raised money for the Confederacy. She wrote a book about her imprisonment and was able to raise $2,000 in gold from the proceeds of its sale. She boarded the Condor for her return trip home. Approaching the Cape Fear, the Condor ran the outer line of blockaders, but as she neared the bar at New Inlet, she was chased by the Union gunboat Niphon. In attempting to avoid a collision with a grounded blockade runner, Captain Hewett turned to starboard and found his ship grounded, as well.

“
Mrs. Greenhow was fearful of being captured by Union forces, and rightly so, for she was carrying intelligence dispatches addressed to President Davis and she would have been imprisoned again. She persuaded the Captain to launch a small boat to take her ashore. But the small boat capsized and Mrs. Greenhow drowned, weighed down by the pouch of gold sovereigns she wore around her neck.”

“
Dear, dear, what a tragedy,” Aunt Ruby murmured.

“
Her body was washed ashore at Ft. Fisher, where she was recognized and delivered to Wilmington for a full military burial.”

“
What happened to the gold?” Jon wanted to know.

“
It is said a sentry delivered the gold to Colonel Lamb, but there is no reference to this occurring in Colonel Lamb’s writings.”

“
Perhaps the pouch opened and the gold sovereigns spilled out and sank to the bottom of New Inlet,” Jon speculated.

“
If that is indeed what happened to the gold,” Binkie said, “we shall never know. In 1872 the Army Corps of Engineers closed New Inlet by constructing a rock dam with granite capstones.”

Jon opened the grill and added the vegetables to the platter. “Still, I wonder what a gold sovereign is worth . . .”

His words were cut off by the roar of a speed boat. A white boat cut straight across the waterway and bounced over the current. Pelicans flew up and out of the way with squalls of protest. The boat was flying straight at us, on a collision course with our deck.

“
Up!” I shouted. “Run! In the house.”

“
What?” Aunt Ruby cried, turning. I grabbed her arm and propelled her inside. Binkie followed. Jon rushed in behind us and quickly slammed the French doors shut.

We all stared out through the glass panes, horrified. Would the pilot be able to stop in time? Was his boat out of control? Just as he was about to crash into the rushes which would have choked his propellers, the boat turned sharply and veered away from the shore so fast it almost overturned. A great plume of water sprayed up behind the boat. The lone pilot had almost crashed into the deck. It had all happened very fast, but I had a distinct impression of a man in a ball cap and a tent-like shirt, training a pair of binoculars on us.

7

Willie Hudson was angry. He balled up his fists and gave the door a fierce look, like it had ruined his morning. Willie, who is our general contractor and who knows more about old house construction than Jon and I put together, is normally the epitome of laid back. But not on this Monday morning. Not as he surveyed the wreckage of Binkie’s front door.

“
Well, at least they didn’t get in,” he said stonily. Then, shaking his head negatively, he said, “Sometimes, I think I’m getting too old for this world. Too much crime in the world today. Too much senseless crime. Why, you can just look at the professor’s modest house and know he doesn’t have plasma TVs in there. Nothing worth stealing, unless you’re into history books.”

Last night after we had recovered from the speed boat’s near miss of Jon’s deck, we had gone on to enjoy a pleasant dinner of grilled grouper and grilled veggies. Then Binkie and Aunt Ruby had returned to Binkie’s house on Front Street to find that someone had tried to break the lock and pry the front door open. When the housebreaker had not gained entry through the front door, he had gone around back and tried the same thing on the back door. The back door had yielded, but then the burglar had found himself inside an enclosed kitchen porch and prevented from entering the house by a second solid door.

Binkie was no fool. He and Aunt Ruby divided their time between his Wilmington house and her house in Savannah. Binkie had seen to it that both houses were secure in their absence. He had not installed an alarm system because they could be super-sensitive, going off if the paperboy hit the door with a tossed newspaper and he would not be there to turn it off. But he had had Willie, our general contractor, install steel core doors and sturdy locks here at his house on Front Street.

“
This door is so banged up, I think I’d better buy you a new one,” Willie told Binkie. “I’ll put it up for you, free of charge. The back door too. But the destruction to Ruby’s crafts, well, that’s just plain vandalism. All that pretty pottery, so lovingly hand-painted - tossed and broken on the floor, clay shards everywhere. It’s a crying shame. That man was enraged. Mad as a wet hornet that he couldn’t get in. I don’t know why someone would go to so much trouble when there are bigger, richer homes all about.”

His gaze traveled north to the Colonial-era Brown-Lord House on Front Street and Ann, with its pink painted exterior and white sawn work and a history that went back to before the American Revolution. The handsome Italianate Honnet House was just a few doors south, and on the next block there was the magnificent Governor Dudley Mansion. Willie was right to wonder why a burglar had selected Binkie’s modest home.