Blood, Ash, and Bone

CHAPTER Forty-six

Hope glared at Kendrick. “I told you, I wasn’t stealing the damn boat! Tai told me to get on it!”

“I suppose she told you to rip off the top of the console and try to hotwire it too.”

“That wasn’t me!”

“Right.”

I stepped forward. “She’s telling the truth, Kendrick. I told her to go there. And I hot-wired the boat.”

Hope turned the glare on me. I saw no more glimpses of the smooth operator. Her hair was a clump of tangles, and blood streaked her sweatshirt. I realized with a start it was Jasper’s, the spray from Trey’s bullets.

Kendrick pulled something from under his jacket. “I suppose you can explain this too?”

He handed me a roll of papers the color of watery parchment. I took them to the counter and unrolled them gingerly. They were old, rain-dappled, the writing penned in looping old-fashioned lines.

I read the first few words, then stared at Hope. “Is it real?”

She stared back. “Winston went behind my back to get a bidding war started between Fitzhugh and the KKK for it. So yeah, I’d say it’s real.”

“You set him up.”

“He deserved it.” She wiped her cheek on her shoulder, leaving a stripe of mud on the sweatshirt. “When I found out he was trying to cheat me, I took that from his briefcase and left the Bible in there. I moved the forger’s kit back under the counter where the cops could find it. And then I went to watch Winston try to explain himself to the Klan. But I didn’t kill him. I had nothing to do with that.”

I ran my finger along the powdery surface of the papers. They looked too decrepit to have inspired such mayhem and blood, and not just Winston’s. Centuries of blood.

Trey rose, steadying himself with a hand on the counter. He examined the papers. “It’s letterhead stationery. From the Marshall House.”

“Yep. Exactly the same paper the police found in the forger’s kit, which was the same paper used to make the fake treasure map, only that particular piece had its letterhead lopped off.”

He tilted his head and peered closer. “It looks like notes for an essay.”

“For a speech, actually, an infamous one. One that wasn’t supposed to exist in any written form.”

Marisa popped her hands on her hips. “Enough with the drawing room nonsense, what the hell is it?”

“It’s the Cornerstone Speech.”

“The what?”

I took a deep breath. “A speech presented by the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, in 1861. He delivered it a few blocks from here, on Wright Square, declaring clearly and specifically that the foundation of the Confederate nation was the superiority of the white race and its divine right to subjugate lesser races.”

I’d lapsed easily into the smooth patter of the tour guide, the details drawn verbatim from my memory banks. I saw Wright Square in my head, green with spring. During Stephen’s speech, it had been thronged with cheering white people, too many to fit in the building, all of them delighted to hear their superior nature championed by this officer of the Confederacy.

I stared at the paper, so genteel and innocent in appearance, so vile in its declarations. “Afterwards Stephens recanted most of it, said the press misquoted him. He said this from a Federal prison. During his visit to Savannah, he stayed at a private residence, but apparently, he spent some time at the Marshall House too, hanging out with other well-heeled rebels. And he made these notes while he was there.”

Marisa shook her head. “But where have they been all this time?”

“Probably stuck in storage with other old papers when the Union converted the hotel to a hospital, eventually offered as a lot to anyone willing to haul them away. I’m betting our forger down in Florida picked everything up for cheap. It was only a bunch of old paper, after all. Except that to a forger, it was a gold mine of raw materials.”

Marisa joined Trey and me at the counter. “That’s it? Two people dead, multiple felonies on the tab, for…that?”

Every eye in the room went to the document. Not gold, not jewels. Four crumbling pieces of paper, hardly worth a second glance.

I handed the papers back to Kendrick. “Jasper was right about one thing—it wasn’t about money.”

Trey frowned. “What possible motive could he have had for stealing this from his own organization except to sell it and make money?”

“He thought it was his duty. He knew the Klan didn’t want to honor the speech—they wanted to hide it.”

The silence in the room thickened. Everybody stared at me, baffled. Except for Hope. She knew the score as well as I did.

I sat on the edge of the counter. “We’re talking about the new Klan, a bunch of pamphlet-pushing revisionists. They’ve put a spin job on the entire Confederacy—it wasn’t about slavery, they say, it was about state’s rights, and they’re not anti-black, they’re pro-white.” I pointed. “That piece of paper? It undoes every bit of propaganda they’ve created. Jasper started his own militia group within the KKK, remember? Something like the Cornerstone Speech may be inconvenient for the new Klan, but for people like Jasper? It’s holy writ.”

I remembered his words on the dock, the glow of the fanatic. He believed in the words on the old paper, had been willing to kill for them. By any means necessary, he’d said.

“Jasper was on the selectmen council,” I said. “He was one of the few who knew the Grand Wizard was purchasing the Cornerstone Speech from Winston, and he knew what would happen to it if they did. So he and his militia buddies killed Winston and stole the briefcase before he could make the exchange.”

I pointed to Hope. “Only the document wasn’t in there, thanks to Hope here. So they started looking for it, thinking that if Winston didn’t have it, Fitzhugh probably did. But Fitzhugh didn’t—he was too busy trying to cover his own lying, thieving tracks. Next, they decided Phoenix had it. So they broke into Trey’s hotel room. Hope saw them, in uniform, headed into the hotel from the dock. She thought I’d squealed on her and ran.”

Hope didn’t argue. A lot of the spit and vinegar had gone out of her, but her cunning remained. I could sense her juggling her options, trying to find an escape clause.

I moved to stand in front of her. “I still don’t get it. You’re smart. You knew what kind of evil bastards you were dealing with. Why didn’t you drop this a long time ago?”

“I told you, I needed the money. The business is going under because John’s an idiot, so the IRS is coming after me. Winston told me the Bible was a forgery, but insisted we could probably still find a buyer.” Her eyes hardened. “He didn’t mention the real document he’d found, oh no, he didn’t breathe a word about that.”

So that was the story—greed, revenge, stubbornness. Nothing new under the sun. I turned to Kendrick. “So now what?”

He shrugged. “Now we take her in.”

“What?” Hope struggled in his grasp. “You can’t stick me in jail! What if Jasper’s got men in there?”

I folded my arms. “I have a hard time caring.”

She was panting now, desperate. We’d been friends once. She’d been exactly this person then—charismatic and adventurous, selfish and devious—and she’d be this person forever. John too. Neither of them had changed one bit.

I looked over at Trey. Stalwart, patient, honest. Again and again he showed up for me, and again and again he would. John really was an idiot, but he had one thing right—my taste in men really had changed.

Hope noticed me looking in Trey’s direction. “You can’t put me in jail. You need me to testify.” She licked her lips. “You help me, I’ll say Trey saved my life.”

My temper finally snapped its leash. “Damn straight you will. It’s the only hope you have for a shred of leniency.” I stepped closer, right in her face. “But we don’t need you, we’ve got real-time footage. So let me put this in terms you’ll understand. It’s your neck on the line if you don’t cooperate, not Trey’s, so you’d best spill the truth, sister, every drop of it. You hear me?”

She froze, the reality of her situation finally knocking the perverse hard-headedness right out of her. She nodded, and Kendrick pulled her uncomplaining into the hall. I felt a surge of relief. Finally, somebody besides me was getting hauled downtown.

Trey watched them leave. “Marisa says I have to go to the ER now.”

“I know.”

“Will you come with me?”

I knew I’d spend hours in the waiting room chewing my nails, that I’d end up bumming a cigarette from some orderly before it was over, sucking it down behind some dumpster. I knew I’d drink too much bad coffee and fill out paperwork while the real action played out here with Marisa and Sergeant Kendrick and Federal Agent Garrity.

I patted his shoulder. “Of course, Trey. Whatever you need.”