Vermelle
LeGare had one of the oldest, most prominent surnames in Charleston.
Fact is, the nicest street in Charleston was LeGare Street—pronounced
Le-gree, as in Simon. Close seconds being Tradd and Church Streets.
Vermelle,
though, was black and poor, a fifth-generation cleaning lady. Her
husband, Willie, had just dropped her off at the corner of Broad and
Church—a ten-minute walk to the house on Stoll’s Alley where
Vermelle was working that day. Willie’d dropped her there because
he had a big roofing job that day and didn’t want to be late.
Vermelle didn’t point out to Willie that his being on time would
make her late for Mr. David.
Mr.
David was David Wayne Marion, a rich, handsome fifty-year-old man.
Vermelle knew just how rich he was because his net worth had been
published in an article in the Post
& Courier when
he took an ill-fated run at becoming governor. Seventy-five million,
mostly in real estate, she recalled.
After
he lost in his bid to become governor, Mr. David veered off in a
whole different direction and—of all crazy things—ended up
becoming the star of a TV reality show. He had money, looks, and
success, so fame was all that was left. But Vermelle had seen the
show and... well, she intended to keep her opinion to herself.
She
walked down Church Street and marveled once again at the beautiful
houses on the street shaded by live oak trees with their wide,
majestic canopies. Her favorite was a four-story brick Georgian with
a dark mahogany door and antique glass fanlight above it. The house
had graceful pediments above the windows and a perfectly proportioned
wall to its right. On the second floor was a classic piazza where she
imagined the husband and wife sipped their sloe-gin fizzes as soon as
the clock struck five. Maybe earlier.
On
the next block, she passed the garage door of an elegant
Federalist-style house and chuckled to herself at the angry red
letters stenciled onto its garage: Do
not block driveway. Violators will be persecuted to the full extent
of the law.
Did
that mean hanged, she wondered, or merely tarred-and- feathered? And
wasn’t it... prosecuted?
White people didn’t make mistakes like that... did they?
Her
favorite wall in Charleston was on the next block. Its surface was
dirty concrete with patches of green lichen making it look a thousand
years old. The highlight of the wall was the most intricately
detailed wrought iron gate she had ever seen. She wondered if it had
been crafted by Philip Simmons, a blacksmith by trade and a black man
by birth whose work, she had heard, had ended up in the Smithsonian
Museum.
Then
she passed the decrepit house with a severe lean to one side, that
always caught her attention. It was a stately colonial with imposing
columns but was run-down and neglected. Like the owner couldn’t
afford to keep it up. She had heard Mr. David on the phone once
making fun of a woman who was, “house-rich and checkbook poor”
and wondered if this was her place. Mr. David went on about how the
woman was from an old Charleston family but had been spotted using
food stamps on the down-low at the local Harris Teeter food market.
Vermelle
turned left on Stolls Alley and walked over the bumpy, broken-brick
pavement. The roads were in far better shape up on Nunan Street—in
the heart of the ’hood—where she lived in her two-bedroom
freedman’s cottage. She had observed how the well-to-do south of
Broad Street folks leaned toward the old, worn, distressed look. She
had heard the word ‘quaint’ used a lot but just couldn’t see
it.
At
number 5 Stoll’s Alley, she rang the bell and waited.
David
Marion’s Greek Revival featured grey stucco over brick— the brick
peeking through in several places. Vermelle had heard how at one
point in history brick had lost favor with the rich folk so they had
simply stuccoed over it. As she fumbled for her key, she looked over
at the bulky two-inch-thick shutters with cut-outs of palmetto trees
and the flickering gas lanterns that David Marion kept on at all
time.
After
a minute or so, she knocked and waited. Nothing.
She knocked again.
Nothing.
Out
of options, she tried the doorknob. To her surprise, it opened. That
was odd. She pushed it open and stuck her head in.“Mr. David, it’s
me, Vermelle.”
She
walked into the hallway, the rare herring-bone heart-of-pine floor
at her feet. “Mr. David,” she said again a little louder,
“it’s Vermelle.”
She
walked into the living room recently decorated by
Madeline Littleworth Mortimer herself. “Mr. David?”
She
figured he must have hurried off to shoot a scene for his dopey TV
show and had forgotten to lock the house. It had happened before. She
went down the hallway to his bedroom to get the sheets, towels, and
his dirty clothes; the first thing she always did. The bedroom
door was open, and she went in.
And
there, sprawled atop the 1000-count Egyptian sheets of his king-size
bed, lay David Wayne Marion buck naked and with a bullet hole in his
forehead.
First,
Vermelle screamed, scaring the hell out of Mr. David’s Labrador
retriever, napping at the side of the bed. Then she called the cops.
Finally,
she fled the house and headed straight to the AME Church upon
Calhoun. All she could do now was pray for the soul of poor Mr.
David. Buy
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A native New Englander, Tom Turner dropped out of college and ran a Vermont bar...into the ground. After limping back to college to get his diploma, Tom became an advertising copywriter, first in Boston then New York. After ten years of post-Mad Men life, he made a radical change and got a job in commercial real estate. Not long after that, he ended up in Palm Beach, buying, renovating and selling houses along with collecting raw material for his novels. On the side, he wrote Palm Beach Nasty, its sequel, Palm Beach Poison, and a screenplay called Blood Red Sea. While at a wedding a few years later, he fell for the charm of Charleston, South Carolina, and moved there. Recently, wandering Tom moved again. This time, just down the road to Skidaway Island, outside of Savannah, where he's writing a novel about passion and murder among his neighbors. Website |
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