By the end of the day we'd come up with eleven possibilities. Billy had found clergymen with the last name of Jefferson in six towns around Lake Okeechobee and in the south central part of the state. I'd found two each in Miami and Tampa and another in Placid City. We had eliminated several others by running their names through Billy's link with the Florida Department of Transportations driver's license database. Using their dates of birth, we kept only those between the ages of forty and sixty, giving ourselves some guessing room. Without access to the software that would have displayed photo I.D.s, we couldn't winnow the list by race. Instead, we split the list and started making phone calls.
"Yes, this is Reverend Jefferson, what can I do to help you?"
"Thanks for your time, Reverend. My name is Max Freeman and I'm working with the law office of Billy Manchester in West Palm Beach on an inheritance matter. I was hoping, sir, that you might be the man we are searching for."
A slightly skeptical silence followed.
"Yes, Mr. Freeman. If this isn't a sales call, please, go on."
"Well, sir, our only information is that our Mr. Jefferson may be a member of the clergy in Florida and grew up with a family in the southwestern part of the state."
A slight chuckle sounded from the deep baritone on the other end of the line.
"Well, Mr. Freeman, you have eliminated me, sir. I am a native New Yorker, and my extended family is deeply ensconced in the Fishkill area. I only took on this congregation five years ago, quite frankly in an effort to leave the winters behind."
"Then I've taken your time unduly, Reverend. Forgive me. But can I ask if you might have come across another clergyman who shares your last name, sir?"
So the conversations went. We had no luck with our leads in the cities, which did not surprise me. When I was able to speak directly to the pastors, the lack of accent alone was a giveaway. You did not grow up as a native in the deep corner of southwest Florida in the forties and fifties without forever holding that slow, Southern speech. My sense of the man we were looking for was someone in a small, rural setting. An escape from the isolated world of the Everglades, if that's what it was, wouldn't have taken him into a place of high-rises and concrete.
I got a map of Florida up on one of the computer screens and looked it over, the remaining list of Jeffersons in my head. Plant City was just outside of Tampa on the I-4 corridor to Orlando. The interstate had become so commercial and crowded that it almost rivaled the I-95 strip to Miami. Harlem was a small agricultural town along the southern edge of the lake. It was a possibility, but when I made the call to Pastor Jefferson at the Harlem Baptist Church, he too fell off the list.
"I am truly sorry, Mr. Freeman, but my family, we've been here and here alone for most of the last one hundred years. My own father led this church before he moved on to join the Lord and his father before him.
"But y'all might call up to Placid City. There is a minister name of Jefferson up that way. A fine man, though I can't say I know too much about where his people are from."
Placid City was represented by a small black dot on the map. It was just off U.S. 27 northeast of the big lake and south of Sebring. There were splotches of blue around it, representing small, landlocked lakes. But most of the area around it on the screen was stark, empty white. I circled the number of Rev. William Jefferson of the First Church of God on North Sylvan Street and dialed it.
"Yes, this is Pastor Jefferson's number, but he's not in right now. Can I take a message for him, please?"
The woman's voice was warm and personable, certainly not that of a secretary.
"When might you expect him back?" I said.
"Well, sir, he is out visiting with Ms. Thompson out to Lorida. She's gone sick and I do expect he will be late," she said. "This is his wife, Margery. Can I help you?"
I went into my spiel and she listened without interruption.
"You say this is an inheritance matter, Mr. Freeman? I'm not sure what you mean."
"Having to do with family that the Mr. Jefferson we are looking for would have had in the Everglades City area, ma'am. Can you tell me, ma'am, if your husband is from that part of the state?"
Again there was silence.
"That was a very long time ago, Mr. Freeman, and I can't imagine that my husband would have any kind of inheritance matters, as you call them, from that time. That part of the family has long since been passed on."
"Yes, ma'am, I understand. We may very well have the wrong person, but may I call again, Mrs. Jefferson, when your husband is available?"
"Certainly. Please give me your number, Mr. Freeman, and I will make sure he gets the message."
After I hung up I leaned back in Billy's chair and looked again at the small black dot of Placid City. It was the most solid lead yet, and the quiet, not wholly forthcoming quality of Mrs. Jefferson's voice slipped under my skin. "That part of the family has been passed on." It was not the usual use of the phrase, and the wording formed a small jagged rock in my head that I began to grind.
CHAPTER
14
I spent the next day on the beach with Richards. It was her day off and she'd called me with a request to do absolutely nothing, and I could think of no better venue. Billy's own Jefferson search had gained little except a couple of flat-out eliminations and the promise of some callbacks. We agreed that Placid City was the best bet so far, and I ditched my paranoia over the possible intercepts of my cell phone and brought it with me in case the Reverend William should call. I picked Sherry up at ten, and we cruised up A1A to the north end of Lauderdale's open beach and struck our umbrella into a plot of sand like Oklahoma land-rush settlers claiming our forty acres. We unfolded a couple of low chairs, made sure the cooler I'd packed was guarded by the umbrella's shade, and then sat. I heard a sigh of pleasure come from Richards as she stretched out her long legs and crossed her ankles in the warm sand.
"No cases. No cop talk. No dissection of investigations, Freeman," she said, her eyes hidden by her dark-tinted sunglasses. "Gonna be like normal folk, kicking back without a worry in the world."
"Since when have there been normal folk without a worry in the world?" I said, matching her stretched-out pose. The sky was clear and the water blue green. A flock of some dozen white-bellied sanderlings was scattered at the tide mark, pecking at the backwash. When the next wave arrived, their black legs skittered like an old silent film at ridiculously high speed to keep ahead of it.
"You know what I mean, Max," she said, cranking the chair back so her face angled up into the sun.
She was wearing an aqua green one-piece made of some kind of Lycra that competitive swimmers wear. She was not the kind of woman who had to cover any part of her figure, but I'd never seen her in a bikini. Her hair was brushed back into a ponytail that she'd slipped through the adjustable back of her Robicheaux's Dock amp; Bait Shop cap. I was content to sit and watch her, occasionally shift my attention to a lonely cloud scudding across the blue sky, and then shift back to watch more of her. She was quiet for a few minutes, then pulled a tube of suntan lotion out of her bag and started on her legs. Once covered, she again reclined. I watched a woman in a straw hat and varicose veins work her way slowly south, picking through shells. I had great practice being silent. I knew I could wait Richards out.