General Lee's Jacket: From the Case Files of Oatmeal and Grits Read online

  General Lee’s Jacket

  a short story

  From the Case Files of Oatmeal and Grits

  by

  Robert Spearman

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this, and tell your friends about it.

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  Copyright © 2016 Robert Spearman

  All rights reserved.

  My partner, Jim “Oatmeal” Miller, pushed his plate toward the center of the table and looked up at me. “Whose turn?” he asked. He knew the answer but always asked. It was his way of saying, “I’m finished, let’s go.”

  “Mine,” I said.

  I raised a finger to get the waitress’s attention. The restaurant, Beulah’s Homespun, was always busy at breakfast. People waited outside on green, ornamental iron benches for a table. If you worked downtown, you had two choices for breakfast, Beulah’s or The Grill. Jim and I always opted for Beulah’s because it was within walking distance of “Big 12.” Built in 1912, Big 12 was the local nickname for the county jail and Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.

  Beulah delivered the check and asked us if we wanted warmups for our coffee. We both nodded, Jim coughed into his hand as I heard the door open behind me.

  “Trouble’s here,” Jim said, trying to conceal the words in another cough.

  I looked up to see Chief Deputy Wally Waxman staring down at Jim and me. He was the number two man in the LCSO and the sheriff’s personal assistant. Most of us called him “Walleye” because his bulging, watery eyes reminded most folks of a fish.

  “Well, if it ain’t my two favorite detectives, Jim and Bud, Oatmeal and Grits, Frick and Frack, Laurel and Hardy,” Waxman said as he grabbed an empty chair from an adjoining table.

  He parked himself at the end of the two-person table between Jim and me. Jim had a small piece of bacon left on his plate. Wally grabbed it and stuck it in his mouth. Jim cringed as he did this, he was a nut about his personal space and grabbing something uneaten off his plate unsettled him.

  “What’s up, Chief Deputy?” I asked. No one dared to call him by his given name or even his surname. A uniformed deputy called him Wally once. He berated the young man for over fifteen minutes, an expletive-filled tongue lashing about respect and honor.

  “I’ve been looking for y’all all morning. Someone told me you ate at The Grill, but I guess they were misinformed. I waited there for over fifteen minutes until I decided you weren’t going to show and then Cletus Hopper told me you never ate there. Anyway, the sheriff wants to see you in his office now,” said Waxman.

  “Why didn’t you tell dispatch to locate us? They track our whereabouts around the clock. You keep us on a pretty short leash.”

  Waxman ignored the question.

  “What is it this time?” asked Jim Miller. “Homicide, bank robbery or something we can get our teeth into? Or perhaps it's a crony case?”

  Jim said this and a mouthful of coffee almost came spewing out of my nose. Jim was smart, scary smart. He coupled that with a dry sense of humor and a covert disdain for anyone in authority.

  There are not a lot of real crimes to solve around here. Murders are almost non-existent, and the uniformed deputies investigated most of the thefts and burglaries. Since Valdosta did not have a private detective agency, most of our cases revolved around catching a cheating wife or husband for one of the sheriff’s friends. Other times we were chasing down deadbeat debtors for local merchants. Jim coined these “crony cases” and now everyone in the department used the term too, even Wally.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it’s a crony case. The sheriff didn’t say. Just told me to find you boys and to have you come to Big 12 and meet with him in his office ASAP. He says he had some folks coming in at nine and wanted to brief you before they get there.”

  “Crony case,” Jim muttered under his breath.

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Where are you parked?” I asked Waxman.

  “Down in the next block, in front of Belk-Hudsons,” he replied.

  “That’s headed in the wrong direction. We’ll walk. We can be at Big 12 before you can get out of your parking space.”

  ~

  I paid the bill as Waxman and Jim walked out the front door. Beulah thanked me for my business and waved me off with a “see you tomorrow.”

  Outside, Waxman was walking toward the next block and Jim was pacing, waiting for me. I glanced up at him, he was a full head taller than me and about fifty pounds lighter.

  “You ready for this Professor?”

  The uniformed deputies called him “Oatmeal”, but I called him “Professor” and he looked the part. Tall and thin, with black-framed glasses. He looked like he should be teaching chemistry at college instead of working as a detective with the local sheriff’s office.

  “Yeah, let’s go see what’s up.”

  We walked down West Hill Avenue and turned right at The Daniel Ashley Hotel. Jim paused in front of the hotel and bought a newspaper from one of the vending machines. We had been partners for almost three years and his routine was always the same—eat breakfast, buy a paper, walk to the office. Even when we were uniformed deputies he followed the same route.

  Jim was the Yankee brains in our duo and I was the local brawn. Jim “Oatmeal” Miller was as thin as a toothpick and I was sawed off and hammered down. I was short but beefy, thick around the gut but muscles in the right places.

  Jim was a Yankee from Pennsylvania. For that matter, around here, anyone north of Macon was considered a Yankee but Jim had the Yankee drawl to go with it. He hated grits and opted for oatmeal instead. That’s how he ended up with his nickname. And I, being a local boy and his partner, was stuck with the name “Grits.”

  We were together as partners for three years as uniformed deputies. Trent Tovey was elected as sheriff and he promoted us to detectives giving the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) its first real detectives—or rather they called us detectives.

  ~

  We walked through the door at Big 12 right as Waxman was pulling into his parking place. The first floor was the offices for the sheriff’s department and the jail was on the second floor. Jim and I had a small office we shared on the left wall. The chief deputy had a larger office on the opposite side of the room, and the sheriff’s personal office stretched all along the back wall. The rest of the first-floor area was open-air, filled with desks of the uniformed deputies and administration.

  Jim stopped by our office and dropped his newspaper on his desk and caught up with me as I entered the sheriff’s office. In the waiting area of the sheriff’s office sat the sheriff’s secretary, Betty Coleman. She had been the secretary of every sheriff for the past thirty years. She helped the sheriff run a tight ship, and was the only person in the sheriff’s department that you dare not make mad. Like a puppeteer, she controlled everything—including the sheriff.

  “Morning, Miss Betty,” I said. “I hear the sheriff wants to see us.”

  “Morning Bud and yes he does. He told me to send you right on in the minute you arrived.” She stood, tapped on the door behind her and opened it. “Go on in boys.”

  Sheriff Trent Tovey met us at the door and gave both our hands a good, firm shake. Tovey was almost forty-five and was the youngest sheriff in the state. He land
ed the office after the former sheriff retired and Tovey ran unopposed. He was a football star in high school and everyone loved him. Tovey started with the sheriff’s department after graduation and worked his way up the ranks to chief deputy. He had a thick mane of hair as black as coal on a moonless night, a square jaw and blue-grey eyes. He was as tall as my partner but his height, coupled with football-star muscles, made him look overpowering.

  Tovey had been sheriff for the past two terms, running unopposed both times. The citizens in Lowndes County loved him. He was not a peace officer but a politician. Some folks said he didn’t know anything about catching crooks but he had the art of kissing babies down to a science. He ran an “open-door” office and anybody with enough political pull, or money, was free to walk in and see him.

  He motioned for us to have a seat in the chairs opposite his desk. He glanced at his wristwatch and muttered something under his breath.

  “Bud, Jim,” he started, “I haven’t got much time so I will give you the basics. At nine o’clock we’ll be joined by Murray Pridgeon and his sister Gladys. They are old friends of mine from high school. I would like for you to hear them out and see if we can be of assistance to them. Their mother is growing senile and is giving them a fit.”

  And now we wait for him to give the disclaimer about this not being police work in 3, 2, 1…

  “Now I know this is not REAL police work, but sometimes our jobs go beyond our badges. We have been charged to keep the peace and helping our friends and constituents is one way to do this. Understood?”

  I nodded my head and looked over at Jim. His head was nodding too but with a slight smirk. I heard a knock on the door behind us and Miss Betty telling the sheriff that his guests had arrived.

  We all stood to greet the Pridgeons.

  Murray Pridgeon was a short, chubby, red-faced man. His beer belly strained the buttons on the front of the shirt, and his face glistened with an oily sheen. He shook the sheriff’s hand and said, “I’m sorry to hear about you and Abbie.”

  “Thanks. Mighty hard for a woman to be married to the sheriff. We’re still friends, though. We have dinner together about once a month,” Tovey said.

  Murray’s sister, Gladys, was a strange-looking bird—and by bird, I mean bird. Her nose came to a sharp point like a beak and her lips pooched together and upturned toward her nose like she was always smelling some unpleasant odor. She wore horn rim glasses encrusted with fake jewels and a feathered hat which added to her bird-like appearance.

  We all shook hands and Murray’s handshake was as weak as his sisters but left you with a wet palm that you wanted to wipe to get rid of his oil and sweat.

  The residue of his clammy handshake was bothering me, and I know it was about to drive Jim up the wall. Jim Miller was a germ freak. I'm sure one of his dreams was to spend the whole day in latex gloves. I glanced over at Jim where he was discreetly wiping his hands on the back of his pants.

  After the handshakes, we all found chairs and pulled together a semicircle of chairs in front of the sheriff’s desk. The sheriff kicked off the meeting with a nod to Murray Pridgeon and saying, “Why don’t you get started?”

  Murray Pridgeon cleared his throat and began. “Well it’s about our mother Freda,” he said. His voice was timid and weak like his handshake. “She has, or rather had, in her possession a certain priceless antique that was acquired by our father and which my sisters and I are to receive upon our mother's passing. Now we are afraid she has disposed of this item by selling it to a third party, and this is in conflict with our father’s last wishes.”

  “Priceless?” Jim asked. “Is it an antiquity from Egypt or the Holy Lands?” His question was meant to be sarcastic. No one seemed to notice but me.

  “No sir,” said Gladys. “It’s an antique from the Civil War. It’s the very jacket that the great general, Robert E. Lee, wore when he surrendered his beloved army of the south to the Yankees at Appomattox.”

  “I’ve seen paintings of that event, but I don’t ever recall General Lee wearing a jacket. It looked more to me like a military dress overcoat,” said Jim Miller.

  “Jacket, smacket,” said Murray. “It is what you say, a uniform coat, but we’ve always called it a jacket.”

  Jim nodded. “So what makes you think she has sold it?” he asked.

  “Last week, one of my friends spotted Mother in the post office and she had a parcel. My friend caught a glimpse of the address on the package, and she was mailing it to a museum up in Virginia. Murray and I drove out to our mother’s house, but she would not let us come in. She said that she had not sold it but if she had it was none of our business,” said Gladys.

  “We insisted that she let us come in. She pulled out a double-barrel from behind the door and told us she would load us both full of buckshot if we didn’t leave,” said Murray. “She warned us not to come back.”

  “I remember your mom from our days in school together Murray, but I don’t remember her being so headstrong. Miss Freda was always so soft-spoken and kind,” said Sheriff Tovey. “What would y’all like for us to do?”

  “Send someone out there to check on her and the jacket. Find out if she has sold it. If she has, see if you can find out who bought it. We simply must get that precious heirloom back in the family where it belongs,” said Gladys.

  “And if she hasn’t sold it?” I asked.

  “Get her to show it to you and see if she will let you take it away and keep it here in the sheriff’s office for safekeeping,” said Murray. Gladys nodded her agreement.

  “Well if that is all,” said Sheriff Tovey, “we’ll get right on it, and I’ve got two of the best boys here in the force working on it.” We all stood, shook hands once again, and the Pridgeons left.

  I caught a glimpse of the sheriff wiping his hands on his slacks. He laughed and said, “Murray has always had a problem with moisture. Now you boys go on out to Miss Freda’s house and check this out and report back to me. Here’s her address, she lives out near Troupeville.” The sheriff wrote her address and sketched out a map on a sheet of paper and handed it to me.

  ~

  I waited for Jim in the parking lot of Big 12. He said he wanted to grab his newspaper and unload this morning’s coffee, but I was certain he was in the men’s room scrubbing his hands.

  He sat in the passenger’s seat and his red hands confirmed my suspicions. He had scrubbed them so hard they were almost bleeding. He placed the newspaper on the seat between us.

  “So, Professor, what did you make of all that?” I asked.

  “Well the sheriff must be helping them out because of friendship. He certainly isn’t doing it for the money or political contributions,” said Jim.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Clothes and shoes, always the first clue. They came to visit the sheriff in their Sunday’s finest, but their clothes had seen better days. The cuffs on Murray Pridgeon’s pants were threadbare. His Florsheims were old and scuffed on the heel and needed resoling. His sister’s rhinestone glasses were missing a few stones and the tips had worn off the heels of her shoes. These are folks that come from money but now can’t scrape two nickels together to make a dime.”

  I nodded. Jim Miller always surprised me by his insights. He could read a person or a situation in an instant.

  Most people around town knew Murray Pridgeon and was aware that he lost his family’s retail furniture business six months ago. He had filed for bankruptcy leaving his debtors holding the bag. Rumor had it that he lost it all to gambling by frequenting the dog races in Monticello, Florida.

  “Right again, sir,” I said. “And yes, it is probably just a friendship thing. Murray and the sheriff were high school buddies and football teammates.”

  I maneuvered the city streets until we were on Highway 133. We passed the turn off for Troupeville and just before the river I turned down a small dirt road that was just wide enough for a single car. The road ended in front of an old, brightly-painted, colonial style home
.

  The house, painted in light pink with white trim, was large and looked like something out of a coloring book. The front porch stretched across the front of the house with the requisite porch swing at one end. Resting under the swing was two old dogs, too lazy to stand and bark. The lawn was manicured to perfection and beds of azaleas and roses bordered it.

  I parked the car and opened the door. The dogs did not seem to notice my presence, and if they did, they did not care. Jim was scared of dogs, so he waited until I was out of the car and walking toward the porch steps before exiting the car.

  ~

  Mrs. Freda Pridgeon stood on the front porch of her house with a 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun draped over her arm.

  “I wouldn’t take another step if I were you,” she said, pointing the gun in my direction. “Who are you and what business do you have here?” She was a small skinny lady with wiry white hair put up in a bun.

  “Ma’am, my name is Bud Hammontree, and this is my partner Jim Miller. We are detectives with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, and we would like to come in and ask a few questions if you don’t mind,” I said.

  “Detectives? Kind of like them guys on Dragnet on TV?” She started coughing then pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket and coughed into it.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well if that’s what you are I guess it’s okay.” Her coughing stopped. “I have aggravating insurance agents and church folks coming by here about once a week trying to sell me insurance or religion. I keep running them off, but they keep coming back. What does the sheriff’s office want with me?”

  Jim and I walked up the porch steps and she stepped to one side. “Sheriff Tovey wanted us to come out and have a chat with you. Your children are worried about you.”

  “Worried? Pshaw! They don’t give a rat’s behind about me. All they care about is that danged old jacket that my late husband Pete bought from some shyster in Virginia. Come on in boys. We might as well get to talking ‘cause I ain’t gonna have no rest 'til I put all this behind me.”