“Were they alone?”
“Sometimes, I guess, but like I say, I was always right here. Nothin’ happened between them, not in this house.”
“Are you sure, Nineva?”
“Look, Joel, I don’t know ever’thing. I wasn’t with ’em. You think she fooled around with the preacher?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he, Nineva? Give me another good reason for Pete killing him. Did they see each other when you weren’t around?”
“If I wasn’t around how would I know?”
As always, her logic was pure. “So nothing suspicious? Nothing at all?”
Nineva grimaced and rubbed her temples as if coaxing something painful from her memory. Softly, she said, “There was one time.”
“Let’s have it, Nineva,” Joel said, on the verge of a breakthrough.
“She said she had to go to Memphis, said her mother was in the hospital there and in real bad shape. Said she had cancer. Anyways, she wanted the preacher to go visit with her mother in her last days. Said her mother had drifted away from the church and now that she was at the end she really wanted to talk to a preacher to, you know, get things right with God. And since Liza thought so much of Dexter Bell she wanted him to do the Lord’s work with her mother in Memphis. Liza hated to drive, as you know, and so she told me one day that she and the preacher would leave early the next day, after you and Stella got off to school, and go to Memphis. Just the two of them. And they did. And I didn’t think anything about it. Reverend Bell came in that morning, by hisself, and I fixed him a cup of coffee, and the three of us sat right here and he even said a little prayer asking God for safe travels up there and back, and for His healin’ hand on Liza’s mother. It was real touchin’, as I remember. I thought nothin’ of it. Liza told me not to tell you kids about it because she didn’t want you worryin’ about your grandmother, so I said nothin’. They took off and they were gone all day and came back at dark. Liza said she was carsick and had an upset stomach and went to bed. She didn’t feel good for a few days after that, said she thought she caught somethin’ at the hospital in Memphis.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You was busy with school.”
“When was this?”
“When? I don’t take down notes, Joel.”
“Okay, how long after we got the news about Dad? A month, six months, a year?”
“A long time. We heard about Mista Banning, when?”
“May of 1942.”
“Right, okay, then it was cool weather; they was pickin’ cotton. At least a year after we got the news.”
“So the fall of 1943?”
“I guess. I don’t do well with dates and times.”
“Well, that’s odd because her mother didn’t die. Grandmother Sweeney is alive and well in Kansas City. Got a letter from her last week.”
“Right. I asked Liza how her mother was doin’ and all, and she never really wanted to talk about her. Said later that the visit with Reverend Bell must’ve been a good one because the Lord reached down and healed her.”
“So they spent the day together and Liza came home sick. Did you ever get suspicious about it?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“I doubt that, Nineva. You don’t miss much around here.”
“I tend to my business.”
“And everyone else’s too. Where was Jackie Bell that day?”
“I don’t keep up with Jackie Bell.”
“But there was no mention of her?”
“I didn’t ask. They didn’t say.”
“Well, did you ever look back at that day and think something didn’t add up?”
“Like what?”
“Like, well, there are a lot of preachers in Memphis and plenty between here and there. Why would Liza’s mother need a preacher from Clanton? She belongs to an Episcopal church in Memphis, one that Stella and I visited a few times before they moved away. Why wouldn’t Liza tell Stella and me that her mother, our grandmother, was real sick in a Memphis hospital? We used to see her from time to time. No one ever told us she had cancer and she damned sure didn’t die from it. This whole story smells bad, Nineva, and you were never suspicious?”
“I suppose.”
“Suppose what?”
“Well, I’ll just tell you. I never understood why it was such a big secret, their trip to Memphis. I remember thinkin’ that if her mother was real sick, then she ought to take you kids and go visit. But no, she didn’t want you to know about it. That was strange. It was like she and the preacher just wanted to go away for the day, and they needed some reason to feed to me. Yeah, all right, I got suspicious afterward but who was I gonna tell? Amos? I tell him everythin’ anyway and he forgets it all. That man.”
“Did you tell Pete?”
“He never asked.”
“Did you tell Pete?”
“No. I ain’t never told nobody, other’n Amos.”
Joel left her at the table and went for a long drive through the back roads of Ford County. His head spun as he tried to put the facts into place. He felt like a private investigator who had just tracked down the first major clue to a mystery that seemed permanently unsolved.
As confused as he was, though, he was also convinced that Nineva had not told him everything.
Chapter 41
In addition to studying for final exams, Joel wrote the briefs and perfected the appeal of the jury’s verdict in federal court. Since stalling was an integral part of their strategy, he and John Wilbanks waited until the last possible day and filed the final brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 1, 1948.
Two days later, on June 3, Chancellor Abbott Rumbold finally got around to the second lawsuit filed by Jackie Bell, her petition to set aside the allegedly fraudulent conveyance by Pete Banning of his land to his children.
Burch Dunlap had been demanding a trial for months, and Rumbold’s docket was not that crowded. However, the docket was the sole province of the chancellor, and he had been manipulating it for decades. Rumbold routinely did whatever John Wilbanks wanted him to do, plus he had enormous sympathy for the Banning family. If Wilbanks wanted to delay, then the case was certainly in the right court.
Dunlap expected to get a strong dose of home cooking. He wanted to take his lumps, get it over with, perfect his record, and appeal to the state supreme court, where the law meant much more than old friendships.
There were no juries in chancery court. The chancellors ruled like kings, and, as a general rule, the longer they served the more dogmatic they became. Procedures varied from one district to the next and were often changed on the spot.
Rumbold took the bench in the main courtroom without fanfare and said hello. Walter Willy’s screeching call to order was reserved for circuit court only. Rumbold would have none of it.
He noticed the nice crowd and welcomed everyone to the festivities. Present were the usual courthouse regulars — the bored retirees who whittled outside in the shade, the county employees on break, the secretaries from just down the hall, Ernie Dowdle, Hop Purdue, and Penrod up in the balcony with a few other Negroes — along with several dozen spectators.
The news of the $100,000 verdict in federal court three months earlier had not been well received around town, and folks were curious. The legend of Pete Banning continued to grow in Ford County, and most of the people took a dim view of Jackie Bell trying to steal land that had been in one family for over a hundred years.