Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff Read online

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mr. LaBelle insisted. “I was a prisoner of those two criminals just like your parents!”

  I shook my head. “Lenny said something about you wanting to throw him and Possum to the wolves. That saying has been bothering me all night, because I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but now I do. Lenny realized you were going to double-cross them and claim they had been behind all this and that you were innocent. That was why they took you prisoner, wasn’t it?”

  Mr. LaBelle looked at me for a second, and then he just hung his head.

  “Your own wife and daughter could have been killed,” Bee said.

  That was when Mr. LaBelle started to cry. “I couldn’t let them think I was a criminal,” he said in a choked voice.

  “Even if it got all of you killed?” Bee asked.

  “By then it was too late,” he sobbed. “Lenny thought he could take all the money for himself if he got rid of us.”

  The policemen put the cuffs on Mr. LaBelle, and one of the policemen patted him down and took a pistol out of his pants pocket.

  Mr. LaBelle didn’t say another word.

  As they led Mr. LaBelle past us to their car, Deputy Middleton stopped. “How did you figure all that out?”

  “Well, after dinner Judge Gator said something about welding, and I remembered how we’d thrown a welding mask over that dirt mound to try to distract Possum.”

  Bee added, “It just kind of clicked for both of us at the same instant. We remembered the tanks we’d seen and the trucks and the thick pieces of metal.”

  One of the state policemen shook his head. “They stole the acetylene so they could get rid of the armored car by cutting it into pieces?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Everybody thought they robbed the gas company to get money, but it was all about the acetylene.”

  Then Bee added, “And Mr. LaBelle was trucking lots and lots of dirt off the island. I bet if you find out where he dumped it, you’ll find pieces of the armored car.”

  Deputy Middleton looked at us and nodded. “If it wasn’t for you girls, he just might have gotten away with it.”

  As we drove home Bee and I were smiling. We were both as proud as we could be that we had figured everything out. The police had even found a box buried behind the double-wide with what looked like the missing eight million dollars. Bee and I were so delighted with ourselves that we forgot that we were supposed to get punished, and we asked Grandma Em and Daddy if we could have a sleepover. Apparently they were either so tired or so proud of us that they forgot, too, because they agreed.

  We went straight to bed when we got home, but it was way too early the next morning when Daddy and Grandma Em both showed up at my bedroom door and told us to get up right away and come down for breakfast, because there was something important we needed to do. I pulled the pillow over my head, thinking that the punishment I thought we had dodged the night before was awaiting us in the kitchen.

  After a second I rolled over and looked at Bee in the other bed, who was looking just as sleepy as I felt. “What are they talking about?”

  “No idea,” she muttered.

  We came down to the kitchen a few minutes later to find Daddy scrambling eggs. Buttered toast and crisp bacon was already on the table, which was a welcome sight, but I was still as nervous as a chicken in a meat factory.

  Bee and I sat at the table, rubbed the sleep from our eyes, and waited for somebody to tell us what was going on. It was only after Daddy had spooned out the eggs and we all started to eat that they told us.

  “What you girls did—and I’m talking about the good part, not the very, very stupid part—was incredibly brave,” Grandma Em began. “But you know, it was not just the two of you who accomplished it.”

  I shot a sideways glance at Bee, who was already looking at me. We both smelled a really big rat.

  “There was another girl involved,” Grandma Em went on.

  “Donna?” I said. I glanced at Daddy, but he had that stony look on his face that said he was 100 percent behind what Grandma Em was saying.

  “While it was very difficult on all of us, it was hardest on her because of her father. While Mr. LaBelle may have done a lot of terrible things, I believe Donna still loves her father very much. His trial is going to be long and shameful and difficult, and it will be in the news every single day. I believe that you girls need to stand by Donna.”

  “Grandma!” Bee exclaimed. “You don’t know her! She’s horrible.”

  Grandma Em held up a hand for silence. “I know how you girls feel, but when people are in need, we do not worry about whether we like them. We worry about helping them.”

  I rolled my eyes, and Daddy caught it and said in a warning tone, “Abigail, are you listening?”

  He’d called me Abigail. “Yessir,” I muttered.

  A knock on the kitchen door interrupted everything, and a second later Judge Gator walked in. “Almost ready?” he said.

  It was then plain as day why Daddy and Grandma Em had allowed us to have our sleepover. They were in cahoots along with Judge Gator and wanted us corralled up so we’d be easier to control.

  “What do we have to do?” Bee asked.

  “We’re going over to see Donna and her mother,” Grandma Em said. “I’m sure they had a very difficult night.”

  Twenty minutes later we pulled into a driveway in a suburb of small houses I hadn’t been to before. We were in Daddy’s Suburban with Judge Gator following behind, and when we pulled up to a single-level house on a quiet corner, we all climbed out and walked to the front door. Grandma Em had brought a baked ham, a basket of collards and tomatoes from her garden, and a bouquet of flowers. She and Daddy went first and rang the bell.

  A second later Mrs. LaBelle came to the door. She was wearing a robe, her hair was a mess, and there were dark bags the size of ice-cream scoops under her eyes. She just stood there for a few seconds looking at all the things Grandma Em had brought, and right away I saw tears start to gather in the corners of her eyes.

  She took the ham and the flowers and the basket of greens from Grandma Em, then turned around to try and mop her tears. As she did she called out to Donna. A few seconds later Donna appeared from somewhere in the back of the house, not looking any better than her mother. Bee and I knew what we had to do, and even though we weren’t happy about it, we knew it was no use fighting Daddy and Grandma Em.

  I took a step forward. “Bee and I thought you were really brave yesterday,” I told her.

  “Most kids our age could never have done what you did,” Bee added. “You should be proud of yourself. You’re also an awesome actress.”

  Donna looked back and forth between us. “Thanks,” she said after a few seconds.

  Donna’s mom surprised me when she gave us a nice smile. “You and Bee were very brave, too,” she said. “All of us owe you girls our thanks.”

  Judge Gator cleared his throat. “Would you girls please step over to my car?”

  We all did as he asked, but when the judge spoke, he looked only at Donna. “Young lady,” he said, “several days ago, my Boykin spaniel, Yemassee, was stolen right before she was due to have puppies.” He glanced at Bee and me then turned back to Donna.

  “Now, it appears that my dog has been found, and it also appears that all five of her puppies are in fine shape. It’s too soon for the puppies to leave their mother, but it might be fun to see them, don’t you think?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Judge Gator opened up the tailgate window and then dropped the bottom so we could all see Yemassee with her puppies in the back of the car. He reached in, picked up one of the puppies, looked it over, and held it out to me. “I’ve already talked to your dad and Grandma Em and gotten their blessings, and I believe this one ought to be yours,” he said.

  I was stunned. I already had been looking at that pup because he was the biggest dog in the litter. I took him and cradled him gently in my arms and smelled his wonderful puppy scent. He was
calm, looking up at me and not wriggling all around. Daddy always said the early mark of a good hunting dog is one that pays attention to you and not his littermates. His eyes were barely open, but it felt incredible to think that in just a few weeks he might come home to live with Daddy, me, and Rufus.

  The judge handed Bee a little girl puppy, saying, “I picked out a boy for Abbey, because I think she and her daddy would like a hunting dog, but I picked out a nice little girl for you.”

  Bee put out her arms and held her future puppy and beamed at the judge. “Thank you,” she said.

  “It’ll be six weeks at least before they should be taken from Yemassee,” the judge said. “But after that she’ll be yours to take care of and train. And if you ever decide you want her to hunt, I’ll show you some things about training a good bird dog.”

  The judge turned and looked at Donna and her mom. “Now, there’s just one more thing. Donna, why don’t you look in there and see if there might be a puppy you’d like to have.”

  Donna’s eyes went wide with surprise, and she walked over to look in at the remaining puppies. She stood there for a moment, eyeing them; then she pointed to the smallest one. The judge reached back inside the car and came out with it.

  “In almost every litter there is a small, special puppy that we call the runt. Runts normally don’t become great hunting dogs, but they make wonderful, loving pets. Now, I’m guessing you and your mother aren’t avid hunters. Is that correct?”

  Donna was staring at the judge with amazement and hope and maybe even a little bit of happiness in her eyes. She nodded. “Yessir,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “Well, since what you did was just as brave as what Abbey and Bee did, I want you to have that puppy. Do you think you and your mother could give this little girl a home?”

  Donna looked up at her mother, who smiled and nodded.

  The judge put the smallest Boykin into Donna’s arms, and I swore I could actually see something warm and friendly come alive in her eyes. It almost made me think there might be some hope for her yet.

  Twenty-three

  The reason the big hole at Hangman’s Bluff never flooded was thanks to Deputy Middleton’s quick thinking. When he went to check the rice gate, he realized it was just about to give way, so he started up the bulldozer, drove it down into the hole, and pushed a bunch of marl up against it. The marl was heavy and full of clay, and it kept the old wood from giving way under the force of the river.

  Because the hole didn’t flood completely, it meant the bones from the broken graves weren’t washed away and lost, and the police gave Professor Washburn permission to gather them up and move them to a different place. Over the next week, Bee and I rode our ponies over several times to watch Professor Washburn and his team of archeology students from the College of Charleston as they carefully sifted through the mud and dirt for more remains. In their digging they had identified the bones of at least twenty-five people.

  The police were also digging, but but not for bones. Out of one of the big dirt piles, they unearthed the stolen gas truck and a whole bunch of silver tanks that said Old South Bottled Gas. In the other pile, they found what was left of the armored car. It looked like our hunch was right, and that Lenny and Possum had been using the welding gear and the stolen gas to cut up the armored car into pieces that they hauled away with all the marl Mr. LaBelle was trucking off the island.

  The last day we were there was after school on Friday. That morning Bee and I had presented the joint project that we had done for our history assignment. It was titled “How the History Sisters Came to Be: The Story of Two Families.”

  The report started:

  Our families came together nearly three hundred years ago. A rice planter headed one family. He had come to this country from France to find religious freedom and seek his fortune. He bought a plantation on Leadenwah Island and named it Reward.

  We don’t know much about the other family. We don’t know how old they were, how many children they had, or even their names, because they had been imprisoned and brought here from Africa. They did not speak the language or share the culture or religion of the planter family. They were slaves, and coming to the plantation was anything but a reward for them.

  Our report examines what happened over these three hundred years, to acknowledge the wrongs and the suffering but also to recognize that, in some cases, quite by accident, unbreakable bonds were formed, bonds that are very much like traditional family ties between blood relatives. We aren’t trying to say that those bonds in any way justify what came before; only that sometimes, very unexpectedly, very good things can come from very bad things. We believe that is a reason for us to try to practice forgiveness and to have hope for our futures.

  We got an A+, thanks to the fact that Bee wrote most of it.

  That afternoon Bee and I were both still tired out from the craziness of the past week and the work involved in writing our paper, so we were moving slowly. By the time we finally got to Hangman’s Bluff, all of Professor Washburn’s student diggers had quit for the day, and the place was deserted.

  The big piles of dirt were still where they had been, but the trucks and tanks of gas had been taken away. Strips of orange tape that said POLICE CRIME SCENE NO TRESPASSING fluttered in the wind.

  We ignored the tape, tied up our ponies, and walked over to the edge of the huge hole that Mr. LaBelle had dug into what had once been beautiful old farmland. Even though the students were gone, we could see where they had driven wooden stakes into the ground and broken up the entire area into squares lined out with white string.

  Down below us were the tools the archeologists used. There was a long wooden table, a group of large shovels and small hand trowels, and brushes and boxes with mesh screening on their bottoms. The boxes were used to sift through the loose dirt to trap bones, or perhaps coins or shards of pottery that had been buried with the dead slaves to help them in their journey to wherever their spirits were headed.

  Out beyond the trenched ground, the lowering sun glinted hard off the Leadenwah River, forcing us to shield our eyes. A steady wind blew off the water, and the humid, warm air brought with it the familiar scents of pluff mud, shellfish beds, and the distant ocean.

  Bee seemed to be lost in thought as she stared out at the river with a faraway look in her eyes, but after a few seconds she sensed me watching her.

  “Can you hear it?” she asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “The spirits, the ones Mrs. Middleton was talking about. I don’t think they’re angry any longer.”

  “Bee, there’s no way—”

  She held up a hand, shushing me. We stood there with the sun dying slowly in the west and the breeze ruffling our hair. At first the only sound I heard was the splash of a distant mullet and the low whistle of wind as it whispered through the marsh grass. But then, after a few seconds, I heard something else. Singing.

  The sound was so low and so soft that I really couldn’t be certain, but up from the ground all around us came what sounded like low voices raised in some kind of gospel song.

  When I glanced at Bee again, I saw that a tear had broken loose from her eye and was trickling down her cheek. She made no move to wipe it away.

  “You hear it?” she whispered.

  As I nodded I was thinking about families, all kinds of families—about my family and Bee’s family, not just now but going back over the centuries. I thought about all the wrongs and all the pain that had been inflicted by my family onto hers. I thought about how neither Bee nor I could do anything to change what had come before, but if we could remember that we were bound together not only by our common past but also by our friendship, we could take that whole ugly stew of history and make something good from it. Heck, who knew for sure, but maybe we could even make that same idea work where Donna LaBelle was concerned. Maybe.

  I put my arm around Bee’s shoulder and gave her a hug. A minute later we turned around, the sun to our backs now, making our
shadows huge, much bigger than we would ever be. We mounted our ponies and headed for home.

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people without whose help this book would never be what it is. I would like to thank John Rashford, professor of anthropology at the College of Charleston, for his patience and generosity in educating me on many aspects of slave graveyards and the burial customs of enslaved people. I would also like to thank Edward Bennett, Esq., for his friendship and his apparently inexhaustible willingness to guide me through the legal complexities touched on in my books. Thanks always to my wife, Julia, whose love, patience, and encouragement keep me on course, and to my daughter, Liza, for her willingness to read the early drafts and provide honest criticism. Thanks to Jordan Brown, my editor, without whose high standards and remorseless editing this book would have fallen far short, and to Kellie Celia and all the other folks too numerous to be named at HarperCollins/Walden Pond Press for their expertise and rigorous attention to so many details that help transform a pile of words into something truly special. Thanks to Brett Helquist for yet another amazing and evocative cover. And, as always, thanks to Stephen Barbara at Foundry Literary and Media, without whose tenacity, guidance and tireless support none of this could have happened.

  About the Author

  J. E. Thompson is the author of The Girl from Felony Bay, along with a number of books for adults. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, not too far from the bays and plantations that inspire the Felony Bay Mysteries.

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  Books by J. E. Thompson

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  Credits

  Cover illustration © 2014 by Brett Helquist