Wednesday, September 4, 1935
Buddy tipped the peach crate upside down. “Here,” he said. “We’ll just sit right here and watch the cars as they drive through the gate.”
Deputy Wayne Springer took off his blue baseball cap and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve. The air was boiling hot, the sun was a blast furnace, and there was no shade where the two men were stationing themselves, just inside the gate to the baseball field, home of the Darling Boll Weevils.
“Hotter’n Hades,” Wayne remarked emphatically, slapping his cap back on. He sat down on his crate. “Just right for old Huey, if you ask me.” He chuckled shortly. “The senator had better get used to it, see’n as how that’s where he’s headed.”
Buddy tipped the bottle and swigged the last of his orange Nehi soda, which was disagreeably warm from sitting too long in the hot squad car. “Kinda hard on the feller, aren’t you?”
“Not on your life,” Wayne said emphatically. “But I’m not somebody the Kingfish has to worry about. There are plenty in Louisiana who would like to see him turned on a spit, or better yet, deep fried in a kettle of boiling lard. And maybe a few in Washington, the way I hear it—even at the very top. He’s running scared. That’s why he’s got all those thugs trailing along behind him, armed to the teeth.” He shook his head. “If you ask me, those bodyguards of his are as much of a danger as the people Huey is afraid of.”
Buddy didn’t like the sound of that, but since there wasn’t much he could do about Huey Long’s bodyguards, he kept his opinion to himself. Anyway, there was work to do. The senator and his entourage weren’t expected to arrive until just before two in the afternoon. But given what Mrs. Biddle had told him last night, he had decided it would be a good idea if he and Wayne stationed themselves at the gate to the baseball field—before the rest of Darling got there.
When they had arrived just after noon, however, they discovered that the Share Our Wealth Club was already making a day of it. A couple of dozen cars along with the usual patient mules and farm wagons were parked along the edge of the outfield. The Boll Weevils were playing the Anniston Invincibles on Saturday afternoon (with a box supper after the game), so Clyde Perkins had mown the infield and outfield grass. The speaker’s stand was set up just inside the first-base line, emblazoned with red, white, and blue bunting. Draped across the back of the platform was a white bedsheet, with “Darling Loves Huey P. Long!” freshly lettered in bright red paint, which had dripped a little more than the painter probably intended.
In the bleachers in front of the speaker’s stand, some fifty folks had already staked out their seats, the ladies deploying brightly colored umbrellas to ward off the sun, the men shading their heads with newspaper tents. Under the live oaks at the corner of the field, families were relaxing on quilts, enjoying sandwiches and lemonade and watching their kids pretending to be Dizzy Dean and Lou Gehrig and Pepper Martin, while dogs chased the loose balls, barking and generally making happy nuisances of themselves.
Down by third base, Sammy Ray Turnbuckle had set up his popcorn and soft drink stand, which was pulled by his horse, Kernal. He was already serving the younger kids crowding around with nickels clutched in their hot little fists. Out past second base, members of the Darling Academy Band, impressively togged out in their blue and white uniforms, were tuning their instruments and lining up for their first formation. Three trombones, trumpet, tuba, and snare drum were already warming up with a thumping rendition of “The Liberty Bell March.”
Seeing that a number of vehicles had already arrived, Buddy had changed his plan. He and Wayne had gone from one Model T to the next, all twelve of them black, of course. A close inspection of each had failed to reveal what they were looking for. If the target of their search was coming, he hadn’t arrived yet, Buddy decided. And he was pretty sure the fellow was coming, since Mrs. Biddle had spotted a Share Our Wealth poster in the car’s back window. The driver surely wouldn’t want to miss seeing the senator in person. That’s why the sheriff and his deputy had stationed themselves at the gate, where they could give every Model T a good once-over.
In quick succession, they waved through an older Plymouth, a 1923 green Chevrolet, and Bailey Beauchamp’s lemon-yellow Cadillac touring car, with Bailey and his big Cuban cigar in the back seat and his uniformed colored man, Lightning McFall, at the wheel. The Caddy was followed by two Ford Model Ts, the second of which was driven by a smiling Beulah Trivette, with Buddy’s steady girlfriend, Bettina Higgens, in the passenger seat. Wayne stepped out and put up his hand to stop both Fords, ambled slowly around each car, then waved them on.
Beulah and Bettina had just driven through when Buddy saw Benton Moseley climbing down from his seat in the bleachers and strolling over to the gate, hands in the pockets of his rumpled white summer suit, a straw boater shading his eyes. Mr. Moseley was currently serving as the Cypress County attorney (a job that was taken in rotation by the local lawyers), which meant that Buddy got to work with him on cases where there were criminal charges. In his couple of years as sheriff, Buddy had become acquainted with all the other lawyers in town. He preferred Mr. Moseley, who seemed to keep an eye on everything that was going on in Darling and was always glad to answer his questions.
Now, Mr. Moseley had a question for him. “What I want to know, Sheriff,” he said, “is what in the devil you and Wayne have been doing the past half hour. I have watched you prowl around all those parked cars, and here you are, giving some of the folks who drive in a good going-over. But not all of them.” He tipped his boater to the back of his head. “Just what in the devil are you looking for?”
“A Ford Model T,” Buddy said. “Black.”
“You didn’t find one you liked?” Mr. Moseley inquired ironically, gesturing toward the parked cars. “You and Wayne must have inspected at least a dozen while I was watching.”
Wayne chuckled ironically and Buddy cleared his throat. He knew this wasn’t going to sound like . . . well, like evidence. But it was.
“We’re looking for a specific Ford,” he said. “With a Huey Long poster in the rear window and raw eggs on the spokes of the spare tire.”
“Eggs?” Mr. Moseley took off his hat and used it to fan himself. “I knew that Thomas Edison was looking for a rubber substitute for Mr. Ford’s tires. Last I heard, though, he’d landed on goldenrod, not eggs.”
A little stiffly (it was sometimes hard to tell if Mr. Moseley was cracking a joke), Buddy filled in the details of Mrs. Biddle’s adventure in the alley the night before. “She thinks the driver was the arsonist, and I believe her. If we’re lucky,” he added, “the fellow has no idea that he was egged. He may not have noticed that he’s driving around with the evidence on his spare tire.”
“And even if he tries to scrub it off,” Wayne volunteered, “he might leave a few traces. Dried eggs are pretty hard to remove completely.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it’s the best lead we’ve got.”
Buddy turned down his mouth. “It’s our only lead. We’ve got some physical evidence—the delay devices we’ve picked up at the fires. The one we found last night has a pretty good fingerprint on it, too. But that’s the only thing that could point us directly to the arsonist.” He paused. “It’s about time we got a lucky break.”
Out on the field, the Academy band had formed itself into a giant letter D and was playing the first few bars of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” with Wilma Pearl Franklin soloing on the piccolo and a pair of pretty baton twirlers in short white skirts and tall white boots strutting their stuff in front of the band. There was appreciative applause from the bleachers and a couple of wolf whistles.
“Say you spot the egg on the tire and feel like you’ve got your man. Then what?” Mr. Moseley wanted to know. He raised his voice over the music. “Kinda good to think these things out ahead of time.”
“Take him in for questioning, I guess,” Buddy replied—slowly, because he hadn’t thought much further than finding the Ford and identifying the driver. “Impound the car, someplace where it won’t get rained on,” he added. “And search it. We might find one of those delay devices the arsonist is using to set the fires. We might oughtta get a search warrant for his house, too. Could maybe find something there. Oh, and get his fingerprints,” he added.
“Sounds like that pretty much covers the bases,” Mr. Moseley remarked approvingly. “At least for now. If you want that warrant, you’ll find Judge McHenry in his chambers. He said he didn’t intend to waste five minutes listening to Long’s campaign speech.” He put his hat back on. “You reckon your man will give you any trouble?”
Buddy frowned. “Kinda hard to answer that, since we don’t know who he is yet.” He didn’t like trouble, which was why he’d hired Wayne. The more trouble there was, the better the deputy seemed to like it.
Mr. Moseley nodded. “Well, if he does, you just put up a holler. There’re several folks up there in the stands who are pretty riled up about these fires, especially the cotton gin. Picking season is coming up and the farmers don’t like the idea of hauling their cotton all the way over to Monroeville.” He grinned mirthlessly. “They’d jump at the chance to help you collar this fellow and give him a piece of their minds.”
The Academy band swung into a rousing rendition of “Dixie” and the twirlers began a new routine with a complicated series of vertical and horizontal twirls and coordinated aerials. The spectators in the bleachers stood up to sing along, and somebody unfurled a flag.
“They might even prefer it if the sheriff and I would just step back and let them thump on him,” Wayne drawled. There was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“I don’t disagree,” Mr. Moseley said. “But I doubt he’ll give them the chance. Arsonists are a cowardly lot, by and large. That’s why they do what they do, the way they do it. I don’t think he’ll make any trouble for you. Just lay out the evidence, clear and simple. He should be able to see that you’ve got the goods on him.” He turned to go. “With luck, he’ll give up and we’ll get a plea. Save everybody the trouble of a trial.”
It didn’t exactly happen that way, though.