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

  She opened the screen door and we followed her. She led us into a small sitting room to the right of the front door vestibule. “Have a seat. Do you boys care for some iced tea or lemonade?”

  I asked for tea and Jim asked for lemonade. Jim sat at one end of the couch near an end table filled with pictures.

  “Tea and lemonade, coming right up.” She left us alone in the sitting room. I heard her coughing again.

  “She’s sick,” said Jim. “That cough of hers doesn't sound good.”

  She was back in five minutes with the drinks. It looked as if she was having lemonade too but the color of hers was muddier than Jim’s.

  She noticed my curiosity and laughed. “I add a little kick to mine. Helps to jump-start the old noggin. Would y’all care for a little kick in yours?”

  Jim mumbled something about being “on duty” and I shook my head.

  “Well, I guess it’s time to get down to business. Why is it that my children have suddenly taken an interest in my well-being? It is about the coat, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There’s no need for me to beat around the bush with you so let me get right to the point. Your children, Murray and Gladys, visited the sheriff. They told him that they were afraid you had sold a family heirloom that was supposed to be theirs and said when they confronted you on this that you pulled a gun on them and told them not to enter the house. They felt like this was not like you, so they’re worried about your well-being,” I said.

  “Doggone it, I shouldn’t have mailed that parcel from Valdosta. That gossipy old coot saw me in the post office and ran and told Birdie. I should have stuck to sending out my packages from Quitman.”

  “Who is Birdie?” asked Jim.

  “Birdie is my daughter Geneva. We have always called her Birdie because she looks like a bird and always wears her hats with feathers in them. Believe it or not, she has a feather for every day of the week.”

  She said this and I almost choked on my tea. I glanced over at Jim, he had his hand over his mouth stifling a laugh.

  “Well then, Mr. Hammontree, let me see if I can set everybody’s mind at ease. Those two money-grubbing children of mine have not had but one thing on their mind since my dear Pete passed away and that is that jacket. Pete never intended for Murray or Birdie to have it and told me so before he died. They’ve got it in their heads that they are the heirs of it. Pete’s wish was for Annabelle to have it and that’s what I want too. She stood by me until she and her daddy had their big blow-up. She helped me sew, knit, and keep house while Birdie and Murray were out keeping the roads hot,” she said. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes and a couple rolled down her wrinkled face.

  “Who is Annabelle?” I asked.

  “The other daughter,” said Jim before Freda could answer.

  “My, my. Now aren’t you the smart one,” said Freda, looking at Jim. “You sit there all quiet but sizing up everything. I was beginning to wonder if lemonade was the only word you could say. Yes, Annabelle is my youngest. She left here when she was twenty and has never come back, not even for a visit. I know where she is. I have tried writing and calling her but she refuses to answer my letters or my calls.”

  Jim pointed to a picture on an adjacent table. “This is her, isn’t it? And if I’m not mistaken the young man she is with is Sheriff Tovey.” The picture was a beautiful young woman in her late teens and a much younger picture of the sheriff. Another picture on the table was the same young woman, but a little older, rubbing noses with a little girl.

  “Right on both counts, Mr. Miller. She and the sheriff were high school sweethearts. He hung around our house all the time. We thought it was because he was friends with Murray but later discovered that Annabelle was the reason, and not Murray or my fried chicken.” Freda laughed, and the coughing started again.

  She stopped coughing and took a sip of her lemonade. “Sorry about these coughing fits. I'm not doing well. The doc says I don’t have long. And if the cancer's not bad enough I have the beginnings of dementia too. I can't seem to remember where I put things, so I have to leave myself reminders. But that’s okay. I’m ready to get up there and find Pete.” She pointed a finger upward. “He thought he got away from me by passing, but I’m gonna pester that old coot for the rest of eternity.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” I said. “If we had known you were ill we wouldn’t have come out here.”

  “That’s okay. It’s good that you’ve come out. I need to put all this behind me and get my affairs in order before I move on. So let's talk about the jacket. It’s not really a jacket but a military overcoat, the same coat that General Lee wore when he surrendered at Appomattox. It’s worth quite a bit of money if you can find the right collector. Pete had it appraised about twenty years ago, and the appraiser offered him ten thousand right on the spot. There’s no telling what it’s worth today.”

  “And do you still have possession of it?” Jim asked.

  “Yep. I have it. I've made sure that no one could walk away with it, not even those money grubbing children of mine. It’s well protected.”

  “May we see it?” I asked.

  “I thought you would never ask. For you boys to be detectives you sure are slow about getting around to things. Follow me,” Freda said, laughing.

  ~

  Freda led us from the sitting room and around the corner to a flight of stairs. “You boys go on up and I’ll drag up the rear. I can’t quite climb these steps like I once did.”

  I led the way up. Jim and I waited at the top of the stairs for Freda.

  Freda struggled to breathe when she caught up to us. She held up her hand and we waited for her to catch her breath and then followed her down the hall to a pair of doors on the left wall.

  She looked at Jim and me. Her faced brightened followed by a huge smile. “What everybody is so concerned about is behind those doors and trust me, it’s secure. Knock yourselves out and tell me when you find it.” She laughed and coughed, coughed and then laughed some more. She opened the double doors, walked in and flipped on the light switch.

  Jim and I looked at each other. Our mouths flew open, bottom lips almost touching our chins, and then we started laughing. Inside this large room was an army of General Lee’s jackets. Freda had constructed from plumber’s pipes a series of clothes racks and they stretched from wall to wall. Against the wall on the right was a sewing machine with a jacket on it and a storage rack containing bolts of blue-gray wool cloth. Near the storage rack and closer to the doors was a small desk.

  “Well boys, what do you think? There are over one hundred coats in here and they are all identical. So, just go ahead and pick you one out, maybe you will grab the real one.”

  Jim was walking around the room and examining the jackets. I could hear him grunting his approval as he inspected each one.

  “These are remarkable,” he said. “Absolutely remarkable. How long have you been working on these?”

  “I started making replicas about a month after Pete bought the original and brought it home. Pete and I started a little business here. I would make the jackets, and we would sell them to the reenactment folks and collectors. We never passed them off as real but as replicas. We made good money doing it, and I managed to squirrel back a dollar or two even after Pete died. The kids never knew it.”

  Jim strolled over to the sewing machine and started examining it. He seemed fascinated by the spool of green thread on top. “It’s a New Home,” he said. “My mother used a Singer, but my aunts all had New Homes.” Draped over the sewing machine’s sideboard was one of the jackets. Jim stopped and gave it a look.

  “Well, I think with what we’ve seen here today we can put your children’s minds at ease. Do they know about your illness?” I asked.

  “Nope and I would appreciate it if you didn’t. Let me just die in peace without the buzzards swarming by here every other day nibbling me to death. I’ve got a request if you would be so kind.”

  “Sure. How can we help?” I asked.

  “Tell the sheriff to tell Annabelle and ask her to come home. He knows how to reach her and she will listen to him. My husband Pete always wanted Annabelle to get General Lee’s coat. I guess he always felt guilty about the way he treated her when she was a teenager. Things blew up like a bomb around here. She ran away from home, left and went to Florida. She's never come back, not even when her daddy died. Before he died, Jim made me promise to give that old coat to Annabelle.”

  “And if she won’t come home. Will you mail it to her?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Freda said, “if she won’t come home then after I die let Murray and Birdie have them all. I want Annabelle to come back and get what’s hers but she needs to step foot in this house one more time to get it. Tell the sheriff he’s not to breathe a word about the jacket to her, do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I want to leave it to her in such a way that the others won’t pester her about it. I’m about to sell most of the coats in this room to a movie studio. I don’t know why they need so many. Anyway, that should leave about nine or so jackets here. Have them come up here and pick three jackets each. If Annabelle comes, make sure she goes last. I’m sure she will pick the real one.”

  "What if the others pick it out first?" I asked.

  "Don't worry, they won't," said Jim.

  Freda laughed, “Your partner there knows which one is real.”

  “Is that right Professor? You know which one is real?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Jim said. The smirk on his face grew into a grin.

  “And you aren’t gonna tell me, right?”

  “Nope.” His grin grew. “You’ll find out later.”

  Freda ushered us out and down the stairs. Freda asked us to st
ay for lunch but we declined.

  “I hate to see you boys go,” she said, “it’s so rare for me to have visitors these days.”

  “We’ll stop by occasionally and visit with you. Next time we’ll have lunch and maybe a kick in our tea or lemonade,” I said. Her face brightened and she smiled. A smile that seemed to smooth all the wrinkles from her face. A smile that made her look twenty years younger. A smile we would see several more times over the next few weeks.

  ~

  I met with the sheriff and told him about our meeting with Freda but didn’t tell him that Jim had identified the real jacket. We had decided against it on our way back to the office.

  “Well I guess I need to call Murray and his sister and tell them that Freda has not sold the jacket and that it's secure,” said Sheriff Tovey.

  “I wouldn't mention the copies to them,” I said, “or say anything about her health problems. Freda insisted on that.”

  “I think you are right. Thank you for going out there. Miss Freda holds a special place in my heart. I’m going to contact Annabelle right away and tell her she needs to come home.”

  I strolled back to my office where Jim was at his desk reading the paper.

  “Still not going to let me in on Freda’s little secret are you?” I asked. I had not bothered asking him during our trip back to the office. He was in deep thought. I tried to avoid speaking to him when he was that way.

  “Which one?” he asked, smirking.

  “Oh, there’s more than one?”

  “Yep.”

  “Now I am confused. I’m talking about the jacket. What’s the other one?”

  “Annabelle’s fight with her father. The reason for her leaving home.”

  “You know what was in it?”

  “I have a good idea,” Jim said.

  “Well?”

  “Okay. Since you are not going to let me have any peace until you get some answers, while you were chatting with Miss Freda, I was looking at her pictures. The one of Annabelle with the young girl is identical to a photo that Sheriff Tovey has on his desk.”

  “And?”

  “And the sheriff put the picture on his desk after his divorce was final. My guess is that the little girl in the picture is the sheriff’s daughter. I suspect Annabelle’s pregnancy was the reason for the fight between her and her father.”

  “You never cease to amaze me but this is all guesswork, right? You don’t know any of this for sure.”

  “Right, nothing for certain but I am sure about the jacket.”

  “And?”

  “And,” he said, “you will find out when everyone else does.”

  I shook my head and walked out of the office. Sometimes tolerating Jim "Oatmeal" Miller was the hardest part of my job.

  ~

  As promised, Jim and I made regular weekly visits to see Freda, something which her children did not do. Every visit she became thinner and more forgetful. It seemed to me that she would not die but just fade away to nothing like the dot of light when you switched off those old tube televisions.

  The sheriff kept us updated on his attempts to contact Annabelle. After discovering the phone number he had for her was old, he contacted the sheriff’s department in Hillsborough County, Florida to help him find Annabelle.

  Two months after our first visit, Freda’s friend and handyman, Ezra, found her lying on the sofa in a coma and called an ambulance.

  Jim and I went to visit her in the hospital. She was still in the coma and had withered away to almost nothing. As we were leaving her room, we ran into the sheriff in the hall accompanied by two ladies.

  “Bud, Jim,” he said, “please meet Annabelle Pridgeon and her daughter Marla.”

  Jim and I greeted them with a “hello” and a handshake. Seeing Marla and Sheriff Tovey standing there together confirmed to me that she was indeed the sheriff’s daughter just as Jim had suspected. The black hair, square jaw, and blue-gray eyes. There was no question.

  “How is she doing today?” asked Sheriff Tovey.

  “About the same,” I said. “I don’t think Miss Freda has long.”

  A week later Freda died, never regaining consciousness. Upon hearing of Freda’s death, Sheriff Tovey took a uniformed deputy to the house with instructions that no one was to enter. Freda’s will had appointed the sheriff as the executor of her estate, and he did not want Murray or Gladys plundering through the house before the estate sale a week later. The sheriff was to sell everything in the estate sale except for the General Lee’s jackets in the upstairs sewing room.

  Per her will, the children were to divide the “nine or so jackets” in the room. She gave explicit instructions on how to distribute them to her children including the statement that “each heir bring a large suitcase to the estate sale.”

  Her will had included her funeral plans too. Freda had insisted on a graveside service, and I was surprised at the number of folks attending in spite of the foggy, cold, wintery weather. Sheriff Tovey stayed by Annabelle’s side for the service, holding her hand and giving her support.

  ~

  One week after the funeral Sheriff Tovey oversaw the estate auction. It was a sad day. Murray or Gladys didn’t seem to care about the knickknacks their mother had accumulated over the years. Their biggest concern was the money. Their eyes lit up like stars each time an item was sold. Annabelle bid on some of the articles and no one bid against her, ensuring that she would get the items she wanted at the best price possible. Before the auction, Sheriff Tovey packed all of Freda’s photos and gave them to Annabelle. Murray and Gladys did not object.

  The auction finished at 3:00 PM and the bidders all left with their newly-found trinkets. The sheriff secured the money in a metal lockbox and gave it to a uniformed deputy. No one remained in the house but the sheriff, me, Jim, the Pridgeon children, and Annabelle’s daughter.

  Murray and Gladys paced and fidgeted and kept their eyes on the lockbox.

  “So,” said Murray, “when are we gonna divide up the money and what about the jacket?”

  “The money will be divided into thirds and given to you after probate. We have to make sure there are no claims against your mother's estate. As for the jacket, I had asked each of you to bring a large suitcase with you here today. Did you do it?” asked the sheriff.

  Murray, Gladys, and Annabelle nodded.

  “Good, good,” said Sheriff Tovey. “Your mama was quite insistent about you bringing the suitcases and about how you are to get the jacket. Only one of you will end up with it. Follow me upstairs and I will explain further.”

  Sheriff Tovey moved upstairs with Freda’s children. Jim and I were waiting outside the sewing room. The sheriff opened the pair of doors and the children all let out a sigh. Inside, on the metal rack, were nine military coats, all alike. Other than the number of jackets on the rack, the room had not changed since the day Jim and I first visited.

  Murray made a move to enter the room but the sheriff blocked his way.

  “Here’s how this is going to work, and this is per Miss Freda’s last wishes,” said the sheriff. He continued, “Only one jacket in the room is the genuine article, the rest are replicas that your mother made before her death. Believe it or not, she and your father had a lucrative business selling replica jackets all around the country. The replica jackets are worth one-thousand dollars each, and the real jacket is worth tens of thousands. Each one of you will go into the room. You have fifteen minutes to pick three jackets. Your will make the selection alone. No one will be in the room with you. Once finished, you are to place the jackets in your suitcase and leave the house. We will do this in age order which means Murray will go first; Gladys is second, and Annabelle will go last. Everybody clear on this?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Murray, go give it your best shot,” said Tovey.

  Murray loosened his tie and ran his fat fingers through his oily brown hair. Sheriff Tovey opened the door and Murray went into the sewing room.