The Girl on the Edge of Summer Read online

  Which meant they knew everything I was going to tell them. “I tracked them back to Edward Springhorn. I gave that information to the mother. I talked to her about what she planned to do, and she said she and her ex-husband were going to pursue legal channels. They had the resources and they guessed that Edward did not, so it would make his life difficult.”

  I paused, but they were still silent, so I continued, “The mother, understandably grieving and upset, made the mistake of calling his workplace. The workplace passed that on to Eddie—Edward—and he showed up at her house. She called me and I came out and told him to leave. He grumbled, but he did so. That was my only encounter with him.”

  Then I was silent.

  “That’s all?” Joanne said, after a long pause.

  “Yes, pretty much.”

  “We have a witness that says you argued heatedly and you fired your gun at him.”

  “Mrs. Stevens was inside her house. She could have only glimpsed us at an angle through a window and unlikely she heard everything we said. As I already told you, he wasn’t happy about being told to leave, in my opinion, less so because it was two women, my client Mrs. Stevens and myself, doing the ordering. I did pull my gun, but my only intent was to equalize the power between us and prevent him from attacking me. He threatened to, took a step toward me. I fired a warning shot off into the lawn. Some grass may have been hurt. I wanted him to leave with as little fuss as possible.”

  “You did fire your gun?” Joanne asked.

  “Yes, but not at him, off to the side, into the ground.”

  “Just that once?”

  “Yes.”

  One of the cops asked, “Did you lie and tell him you were the police?”

  “I told him I was a detective, which I am, and showed him my license. He may have been unsophisticated enough to not recognize it as a private detective license, but he did see it.”

  “Are you being honest about this?” he asked.

  “I have no reason to lie,” I answered. “I did not murder him.”

  “What did you think of him?” Joanne asked.

  I glanced at them, weighing my answer. “A turd from a slime ball. He preyed on young girls, high school–aged, and manipulated them into sex. He was ugly and brutish about it. I considered asking some of the people I hire to do computer research if they wouldn’t mind doing a little hacking in his direction. But I didn’t even do that.”

  “Why?” the so far silent cop asked.

  “It’s not legal.”

  Joanne raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Plus, I’m old enough to know life isn’t going to be kind to people like Eddie Springhorn. I guessed he’d be in jail in a few years and was content to leave it at that. I didn’t think it would go this far this fast.”

  “Could Susie Stevens have killed him?”

  Again I weighted my answer. It was tempting to return the favor of her pointing the finger at me. “I don’t know. She was grieving for her daughter and has good reason to blame him. But…my instinct says she’s a woman who plays by the rules. As she told me, their plan was to make his life a legal hell. Maybe if they’d lost and he won, and she felt there would be no justice from any of the systems she trusted. Plus she has another child, a son, and they seemed close. She didn’t seem to have the kind of hot temper that would abandon him even for revenge.”

  “What about the son?” Joanne asked.

  “He goes to LSU and seems close to his mother. But that’s all I know, I barely got a glimpse of him.”

  “He’s close enough to have come down here,” the formerly silent cop said.

  “I’m sure you’ve considered this,” I said, as politely as I could, since I wasn’t sure they actually had, “Tiffany was not likely to be the first girl he tried this with. Plus men who manipulate girls just barely old enough to consent to sex don’t tend to be fine, upstanding citizens otherwise.”

  “We are pursuing all leads,” Joanna said. She stood up.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.

  “What do you think happened?” the second cop asked me.

  Ah, if I said he was shot in the parlor, they’d want to know how I could know something only the murderer could know. Sorry, sunshine, that’s an old trick. “Clearly he didn’t do what I guessed he’d do, lose his temper and get into a bar fight that ended badly. If that was the case, you’d know who did it and have multiple witnesses. Since you’re here, that didn’t happen. As you took my gun, I assume he was shot. Plus with you willing to consider me or Mrs. Stevens as prime suspects, it’s not likely either of us would have risked going after him with a knife or a baseball bat, given how much bigger he was than both of us. So I’d have to surmise that he was shot with a handgun someplace where no one was around, probably late last night / early morning, and his body wasn’t immediately found, leading to a wider range of suspects. Is that close?”

  The looks they exchanged told me it was right on the money. Joanne didn’t roll her eyes at the cop who’d asked the question—she’s too professional for that—but she came close.

  “Don’t leave town,” that cop told me.

  “I have to cancel my trip to the Spanish wine region? Those tickets are non-refundable.”

  He shot me a worried glance, but Joanne shut it down. “She’s not going to Spain any time soon. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”

  With that, they left.

  I called Danny back but only got voice mail. I told her I wasn’t in handcuffs yet. I trusted she’d call back to get the details. I also wanted to see if she’d give me a clue as to why and how Joanne was involved with this. Given that I was a suspect, she shouldn’t be investigating.

  I debated calling Mrs. Susie Stevens and demanding to know why she had dumped me in it without warning. But other than venting my anger, it would be little good; it might even give the cops evidence I was more involved than I claimed. My gun would come back clean. I could provide some proof of my whereabouts with the sent emails and purchased e-books. Yeah, I’d crossed Fast—and Dead—Eddie’s path in a less-than-pleasant encounter, but my money was that with a little digging they’d find much juicier suspects than me.

  I started looking through what I’d dug up on him, then reminded myself this wasn’t my case and I needed to leave it to the police.

  Fast Eddie had lived up to his nickname. He’d gotten what he deserved fast.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To avoid the temptation of looking at the file for Fast Eddie, I left my office to focus on the other paying case I had and headed for the public library. Yes, it was likely all I’d find would be more sordid dirt on Mr. Frederick Townson, but at least no one could accuse me of murdering him, since I had the strong alibi of not being born yet.

  Being a weekday, parking was not kind. At least I could expense the cost, if not the long walk, to my client.

  My friendly archivist was again there. This time I got her name, Cindy Espinosa, so I could connect with her, as she would know what I was looking for. Even archives have their specialties. If need be, I’d come back every day this week and have a complete tally of every time Rob Byrnes got carted off to jail for being drunk, if that was what it took to keep me as far away as possible from the murder of Fast Eddie.

  I continued searching on Mr. Frederick Townson himself, but the Shreveport arrest was the only one that came up. Even then, while the timing was right, in 1903, it was possible that it was another Frederick Townson. It wasn’t like there was Social Security numbers back then to match up. If that was him, though, it was telling. Men of his rank and riches rarely went to prison. I found the usual blather of newspaper articles, his donations to his church, the marriage of his two sons and one daughter, all into seemingly appropriate families, both sons to daughters of fellow planters and the daughter to the son of the owner of a shipping company.

  I went back to the police reports and my now good friend, Robt. Byrnes. Thirteen and counting on the drunk and disorderlies,
but little else to link him to the murder other than to prove that he was probably so drunk he couldn’t have managed to swat a fly. I did searches on several of his known associates, Mr. Gregory Herring and Mr. Michael Fordeaux, but other than them being described as “artistic” and “not the manly sort,” there was little else of interest. Mr. Fordeaux seemed to have left with a circus as part of an “astounding and wondrous dog who can count and read” act, and Mr. Herring began writing for the penny dreadfuls.

  I again opted for the food trucks for lunch, although the weather wasn’t the kind to make me linger in the small park near the library. Even with the drizzle, it was a welcome change to see daylight.

  As I headed back from lunch, I considered that at least I’d be able to tell Douglas I’d done an exhaustive search. The real point being to exhaust myself so I wouldn’t think about the murder of Fast Eddie. Or worry about more visits from the cops.

  Cindy, my friendly archivist, came up to me just as I was sitting down.

  “Hey, this might be of interest. We’ve only recently been able to process it and add it to the catalogue.” She placed a thick binder in front of me. “It’s a copy, of course, but could be great source material. The handwriting might be hard to read.”

  “What is this?” I asked, trying to smile like I really wanted to read everything there was about Storyville. This seemed more than an afternoon’s work, more than a week’s, even, and I doubted that Douglas would want to pay for that level of exhaustion, nor would I want to go bleary eyed over it.

  “It’s the diary of a policeman who worked the Storyville beat from 1905 to 1911. I haven’t read it through, so can’t promise what’s in it, but it might give you more insight than the court records.”

  I returned her smile. “Thanks, this might be very helpful.” I didn’t need to read the entire thing, I consoled myself, just glance around the pertinent dates and scan for murder of Townson.

  The writing was cramped and at times, scribbled, but after some practice, I could read most of it. I skimmed through the first part, his moving here from Philadelphia to make a better life for his family, the heat, etc.

  A passage caught my eye:

  I must do my utmost to spare my dearest Alibe from the horrors of what I see whilst I work the streets of this pestilential city. Yes, she is strong and would not flinch, but we have agreed that she can continue to work at the school until we are blessed with children of our own. I want her to be able to look at all her pupils, even the paupers, and imagine for them a felicitous future, one of virtue and productive work, instead of knowing that some proportion of them will fall and be the ones I encounter, the weak, the vile, the avaricious, the depraved. I live too much in their world; I will not take them home with me.

  Much of it was mundane, the weather, what they ate, stories of her pupils and the insane politics of the city. His entries on his police work were mostly typical crime, done by the desperate and stupid, drunken bar fights, burglars who robbed the house next door and wore the stolen shoes the next day.

  Then an entry from January 3, 1906, said:

  This is a sad day. I was called in the early hours of the morning to Marais Street, below Canal. One of the women who had fallen into working in that area was found dead in the small room where she spent much of her life. Her ending was a brutal one, beaten, bruised, strangled, and her body violated, left more unclothed than not, with intimate articles of clothing blocking her mouth, preventing her from crying out. She was young, perhaps even pretty with the animation of life. I have seen the dead before; it is part of my professional life, but her death disturbed me as others have not. Women of her ilk often fall prey to that which snatches life away, liquor, diseases, the wear of how they spend their days, but she was too young for any of those. A wicked man sought his pleasure with her and instead took her life. Even if she grabbed his wallet, there was no need for this level of brutality.

  I spent the day asking all in the area who knew the girl, who might wish her harm. But they knew little or admitted little if they did. Only one woman talked to me, the proprietress of the coffee shop nearby. She was polite, but I felt little trust from her, and little belief that I would do more than the shuffling of papers. She did not know the name of the girl beyond Annie, had seen her only recently come to the location. She had seen a man, a bit of a swell she called him, around midnight on the street outside. It was little to go on, and she may be right that only papers will mark the death of this young girl. I will, of course, search for the killer, but he may be on a ship sailing for a foreign land by now.

  I started to read more carefully, but then reminded myself this was a murder that happened over a century ago. If the police couldn’t solve it, I certainly couldn’t. I needed to concentrate on what I was hired to do.

  The afternoon was wearing on. I skipped to the date of Mr. Frederick Townson’s murder, May 3, 1906.

  My dearest Alibe is working hard for the finish of the school year, her pupils a trial and a joy. I worry for her that she cares so much for the children of strangers, but also happy as it shows how she will care for ours, a mother both loving and demanding. I worry for her too, with each murder of a woman close to her in age. Of course, these women aren’t respectable married women as she is, and are in parts of the city she’ll never set foot in, but I cannot imagine a life without her to come home to. Her laugh and merriment at the follies of the world are a light in my life.

  I needed them today, as it has been a long one. Only now with her asleep for the school day am I able to put pen to this journal.

  The heat is in the air, the edge of oppressive summer looming. I was called this morning for another murder, this one bizarre in the extreme. The body was left in the street, near the corner of Conti and Marais. I was only called at the comfortable hour of 7 a.m., itself a worry. A body in the street should not go so long unnoticed. But this time it was not one of the fallen women of the area, but a well-dressed gentleman of middle years but with the appearance of vigorous health, hair and teeth intact, limbs well fleshed.

  His death was one of violence, his head bleeding against the rough sidewalk, likely the mortal blow, but with the marks of a fresh and furious beating, with several wounds from a knife, others a blunt object. Most shocking of all was that in his mouth had been shoved soiled woman’s intimate apparel.

  Unlike the unfortunate women, several of them left unclaimed, to be buried as paupers, this man, no matter what his proclivities, would be someone missed, with the attendant hue and cry for his killer to be caught.

  Alas, that might be an unlikely outcome. I and several of my fellows have spent the day and into the night searching for the information that might lead us to his killer. The denizens of the area are not the friends of the police, and whilst some have tried to help with the murders of the young women, those of their own, so to speak, no one admitted to seeing this man, even lying in the street as he was. He could be a ghost of the night for all the notice anyone had of him or how he came to his unfortunate end.

  I remind myself it is early in the investigation. Perhaps learning his identity will lead us in a productive direction. There may be gambling debts and his body was dropped in this area of town to obscure the time and place of his murder.

  The night is late. I must go to bed.

  A glance at my watch told me that my day, too, was about to end. The library would close in about fifteen minutes. I went to find my new best friend Cindy and ask her if I could arrange to come back in the next day or two (didn’t want to overcommit with the police possibly questioning me about Fast Eddie’s murder) and continue with this material.

  She was very helpful, happy, it seemed that someone was delving into the stacks of history kept here.

  At least with copies of the diary, I could give Mr. Douglas Townson a far clearer account of his great-grandfather’s murder. I was assuming it was him, although he hadn’t been clearly identified yet. How many swell gentlemen would be offed on the same day in the same
location?

  As I headed for my car, I debated my options. I could be super industrious and go back to the office and write this all up. But I could also just make a note of the pertinent passages, get them copied (and expensed to the current Mr. Townson). I hate paperwork. Plus if the police wanted to question me again, my office was one place they might look.

  The other place they might look would be my house, the second of the major options of where to go and what to do.

  I was hungry, and it would be after five p.m. in this part of the world by the time I got anywhere.

  I headed for my new favorite local bar, a mix of dive and gay—well, really genderqueer, as just about anyone, save straight suburbanites, would feel welcome here. It was on Rampart, the lower part of the Quarter, relentlessly gentrifying, but some of the old sordid was stubbornly hanging on. Riley & Finnegan. The only clue to the name was they served a mean corned beef sandwich and had a nice collection of Irish whiskey. And the main barkeep was a wise woman named Mary Buchanan. She was good at talking when customers wanted to talk and at being quiet when they needed to stare into the amber liquid and contemplate life.

  It was also close enough to my house to walk there, although I didn’t this time. I parked my car in the Tremé, across Rampart but not near my house. If Joanne came by, she would not see my car parked nearby.

  Monday was a slow night, only a few regulars there. I took a table in the back. My goal was to not contemplate life, but just enjoy the corned beef and some beer and watch the queer, dive world go by.

  Mary came over to say hi and take my order. After she brought my beer back, we chatted about how the streetcar construction was affecting the business. “It’ll be great to have the line going along here,” she said, “but hell to pay until then. Dust, dirt and noise. I bike in, but it’s impossible to park around here. Glad you give us so much business.”

  I smiled and nodded. I didn’t think I was a great customer, maybe in here a few times a month, mostly a quick drink after work, to occasionally meet Torbin or other friends, or just pass the time, as I was doing now. Mostly the latter.