Colored Heat-Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

                It was almost seven by the time I got to the police station and, as I had suspected, the sheriff had gone home for the night.  Lucas let me use the phone at the front desk to call Sally Ann’s house, and she answered.  She told me to come right over, since they had just finished dinner.  She sounded glad to hear from me.

                I drove over to Bowie Lane and parked in front in my usual place on the street.  Sally Ann was waiting just inside the screen door as I bounded up the front porch steps.  “Hi, Carey,” she said, and let me in.

                “Hi, Sally,” I said.  “Is he here?”

        “Yes, he’s still in the kitchen.”

                At that, Sheriff Martin came out of the back of the house into the living room, buttoning his shirt cuffs and looking as if he had just finished a good meal.  I could hear Mrs. Martin running water in the kitchen to do the dishes.  He shook my hand and told me to sit on the sofa.  “How goes the investigation, Carey?” he said.  “I’m afraid I haven’t come up with much of anything today.  There was some trouble over on South 11th Street that called me out of the office.”

        “Anything important?” I asked.

                “No, not really,” he replied.  “Just a fistfight.  Couple of guys arguing over a girl.  Heat gets to people sometimes.”

                “It gets to me most of the time,” I said, and we all laughed.

                Sally Ann went to the kitchen to fix me a glass of iced tea.  When she came back I took a sip and told the sheriff what had just happened.  “Lester Macaboo III,” he said, not smiling now.  “I’ve known that boy all his life.  His daddy’s oldest son, supposed to be his pride and joy.  He wasn’t always all they wanted him to be, though.”

        “What do you mean?” I asked.

                “Well, he didn’t do all that well in school,” he began, and while that isn’t always a requirement for a successful businessman, there was more.  He got into some trouble at the college, as I recall, though I wasn’t on the case that time.”

                “What sort of trouble?”

                “I believe they call it a Peeping Tom,” he said, and both he and Sally Ann burst into laughter.  “He was in one of the fraternities up there and I suppose they got involved in looking through some windows at a girls’ sorority.  I don’t know if Lester was unlucky, dumb, or just more interested than anyone else, but he was caught sneaking around in the bushes outside one of the girl’s windows.”

        “What happened to him?” I asked.

                “What usually happens to people from rich families,” he replied.  “Nothing.  I think the police called Lester Jr., who pulled some strings and kept it quiet.  I don’t believe Lester III got in any trouble at all.”

                “He never does,” added Sally Ann.  “I’ve heard that he was a pretty wild driver in his younger days, but he never had his license taken away.”

                “That’s true, but he’s lucky that all of his trouble was on county roads,” said Sheriff Martin.  “I’m not sure he would have been so lucky within the town limits.”

                “That so,” I said, starting to wonder if Lester Macaboo III and his family were above the rules.

                “Well,” said the sheriff, “I’d like to think so.  However, as you can imagine, if I ever tried to cross Lester Jr. I’d have to have some pretty strong backing.  He gives plenty of money to the campaigns when election time rolls around, from the city council right up to the President.”

                “The last President was here once, at the Macaboo house,” Sally Ann said.

        “You’re kidding,” I replied.

                “Nope,” she said.  “It was the biggest thing in town a couple of years back.  Remember, Daddy?”

                “How could I forget.  My entire staff had to keep an eye on them, and every county cop and more came to town that day.  I don’t know what all the fuss was about.”

                “So the Macaboos are more than just big fish in a small pond,” I said.

                “You might say.  Have you ever heard of the different levels of rich?” the sheriff asked me.

        “No,” I said.

        “There’s rich, very rich, and Texas rich,” he told me.   “And the Macaboos are Texas rich.”

                I thought about that for a moment.  “You know, Sheriff, I have a funny feeling that the Macaboos are somehow mixed up in what happened here on Juneteenth.”

                He looked at me seriously for a few seconds, then said: “What’re you saying?”

                “I haven’t got it all figured out in my head yet,” I said, but I think it’s like this.  Something happened here in Ransom a long time ago.  It had to do with the black workers at the Oak Street Bakery and Lester Macaboo Sr.”

        “Lester Sr.?” said Sally Ann.”

                “Yeah,” I replied.  “Like I said, it was a long time ago.  Anyway, something happened, but I don’t know what.  It was a big deal for a while and then it was settled.   I think that something happened recently to stir it up.  I don’t know what yet, but it has something to do with the bakery again, and the Macaboos, and Raymond Mackenzie.”

                “Whew,” said Sheriff Martin.  “That’s a lot of speculation.”

        “You’re right, but I think I’m onto something.”

        “Go on,” he said.

                “Whatever happened with Raymond is somehow connected to Lulabelle’s getting shot at the parade,” I said.  “I don’t know why she was killed but it has something to do with Raymond.  And do you know what else?”

        “What?” he said.

                “Whoever came into my grandmother’s apartment and turned off her oxygen was looking for something.”

        “How do you know?” asked Sally Ann.

                “I found a closet door slightly open and some things moved around in the closet.  I think they were looking through a box of old photographs.  I don’t know if they found what they were looking for or not.”

                Sally Ann looked surprised.  “When did this come up?” she asked me.

        “Just now,” I said.

                “So why didn’t you notice it before?” Sheriff Martin said.

                “I haven’t been in her apartment very much the last couple of days, and when I was I wasn’t thinking.  It just hit me a little while ago, after Lester left.”

                The sheriff looked pensive and we were all quiet for a moment.  Then he spoke.  “You’d better be careful, Carey.  The Macaboos may be down-home folks and they may be your cousins, but they’re powerful people.  I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

                “Neither would I,” Sally Ann said, perhaps a little too quickly.  She looked embarrassed, so I smiled at her.

“Don’t worry about me,” I told them.  “I won’t do anything stupid.”  I then proceeded to doing something

very stupid--I went off again detecting on my own and found something that would lead me to the killer, though

I had a little more work and a little more traveling to do before I came to the end of the story.