The Green Book Guesthouse

• Chapter 1: Vacancy on Pine Street
• Chapter 2: The Traveler’s Guide
• Chapter 3: Midnight at the Southern Railway
• Chapter 4: Blood on the Floorboards
• Chapter 5: The Sheriff’s Warning
• Chapter 6: A Ledger Full of Secrets
• Chapter 7: Whispers at the Baptist Church
• Chapter 8: Curfew in the County
• Chapter 9: The Jazzman’s Final Note
• Chapter 10: Shadows Behind the Porch Screen
• Chapter 11: Sundown Lines
• Chapter 12: Tea Leaves and Bitter Lies
• Chapter 13: A Second Knock in the Dark
• Chapter 14: What the Maid Saw
• Chapter 15: Dust Roads and Tail Lights
• Chapter 16: Cold Grits and Cold Trails
• Chapter 17: The Klansman’s Shadow
• Chapter 18: The Hidden Key to Room 4
• Chapter 19: Voices in the Magnolia Grove
• Chapter 20: The Disappearing Salesman
• Chapter 21: Threats in the Mailbox
• Chapter 22: Bloodhound Baying
• Chapter 23: The Courthouse Steps
• Chapter 24: A Web of Alibis
• Chapter 25: Confrontation in the Cellar
• Chapter 26: Safe Haven Restored

The humidity in Lowndes County didn't fall with the sun; it simply thickened, pooling around the porch floorboards like warm grease in a skillet. Corinne Lee stood at the edge of the wrap-around veranda, a clean rag tucked into the pocket of her starched apron, squinting through the gloom at the dusty bend of Pine Street. It was twenty minutes past eight on a Thursday evening in mid-June, 1954, and the streetlights on the colored side of town were flickering with their usual lack of ambition.

Corinne’s home was a broad-shouldered, two-story Victorian that had once belonged to a timber merchant before the boll weevil and the Depression chewed the money out of the county. Now, painted a respectable cream with hunter-green shutters, it was known to folks from Atlanta to New Orleans as the Pine View Guesthouse. More importantly, it had a neat, five-line listing right on page fourteen of The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, tucked between a tire repair shop in Montgomery and a funeral home in Selma that rented upstairs rooms to folks caught out after dark.

Corinne took the tin sign off the hook beside the screen door, turned it over so the painted white letters caught the yellow glow of the porch bulb—VACANCY—and hung it back up. She gave the brass bell on the frame a quick test tap. It rang clear, cutting through the droning choir of cicadas in the pecan grove across the road.

"Don't know why you're putting that out," a voice rasped from the shadows near the fern stand.

Corinne didn't jump. She smoothed her skirt and looked over at her uncle, Daddy June, who had occupied the wicker rocking chair since breakfast. He had a tin cup of cold chicory coffee balanced on one knobby knee and a hand-carved walking stick braced between his boots. He was seventy-two, had survived three distinct depressions and an equal number of railroad strikes, and viewed any automobile with out-of-state plates as an impending natural disaster.

"I put it out because I have four empty beds and half a ham in the icebox," Corinne said smoothly. "Beds don't pay their own taxes, Uncle June."

"Highway patrol was sitting thick as ticks down by the creek bridge when I walked back from the mercantile," the old man said, not moving his head. "State boys. Young ones, too. The kind with fresh haircuts and shiny pistol grips who think every colored man driving north of thirty miles an hour stole the vehicle from their daddy."

"Then those drivers need my porch all the more," Corinne replied, turning her back to the road to check the latch on the screen. "A bed here beats the ditch by the bridge every day of the week."

"Ain't arguing the charity of it, girl. I'm arguing the peace of it."

The low hum of an eight-cylinder engine vibrated through the boards before the headlights swept over the privet hedge. A dark-blue Buick Super, dusted over with powdery red clay up to the door handles, crawled down Pine Street. The car hesitated at the corner of Mulberry, then crept forward, its driver clearly searching the house numbers in the dark. Corinne stepped down two steps of the front stairs, wiping her hands on her apron in a welcoming gesture that was entirely practical. If a patrol car cruised by, a woman standing clearly on her own property, doing domestic chores, was less likely to draw a spotlight than a dark porch.

The Buick pulled into the gravel drive, tires crunching slowly. The headlamps died, leaving only the parking lights glowing amber, like tired eyes.

Corinne descended the rest of the steps and walked toward the driver’s side, keeping her stride unhurried. When you ran a tourist home, you learned to read an automobile before the driver even opened the door. The Buick had Michigan plates—yellow letters on black tin. Detroit. The back seat was piled high with cardboard hatboxes and luggage covered in brown oilcloth, secured with twine. This wasn't a family returning home for a funeral; it was a businessman traveling heavy.

The door creaked open, and a tall, slender man stepped out into the muggy heat. He was impeccably dressed despite the dirt on his fenders: a light-gray tropical wool suit, a fedora with a thin black band, and a cream-colored silk tie held in place by a modest pearl tack. He took off the hat immediately, revealing hair trimmed close and neat, graying at the temples. His eyes were wide with fatigue, red-rimmed behind wire-rimmed spectacles, and he smelled of bay rum, stale tobacco, and gasoline.

"Evening, ma'am," he said, his voice deep, cultured, with the clipped cadence of the North softening around the edges of a Southern birthright. "Miss Lee?"

"Mrs. Lee," Corinne said with an easy smile. "Corinne Lee. You've found the Pine View, sir."

The man let out a breath that sounded like a tire losing air. He leaned against the warm frame of the Buick for just a second, his shoulders dropping two inches. "The Lord is merciful. I saw your listing in the book. I was beginning to think I took a wrong turn after Greenville. The roads out here aren't marked with an excess of hospitality."

"They aren't marked at all if they can help it," Daddy June called from the dark porch. "Keeps folks from knowing they're lost until it's too late."

"Uncle June, hush," Corinne said without looking back. She extended her hand to the traveler, who took it with a brief, dry grip. "Welcome to Lowndes County, Mr...?"

"Preston. Arthur Preston." He reached into his coat pocket, produced a crisp white handkerchief, and dabbed at the collar of his shirt. "I represent the Apex Mutual Life Insurance Company out of Chicago. I've been on the road since four o'clock this morning from Nashville, and I confess, Mrs. Lee, my spine feels like an accordion."

"We can straighten that out," Corinne said. "Single room on the second floor, corner window gets the breeze off the river. Five dollars for the night, includes a hot breakfast at six-thirty. Grits, eggs, side-meat, and fresh biscuits. If you want a tub drawn, that’s twenty-five cents extra for the hot water."

"I would pay five dollars just to sit in that tub right now," Preston said with a faint, tired laugh. He turned back to the car and popped the trunk. Inside lay an array of leather sample cases, thick ledgers bound with heavy canvas straps, and a handsome pigskin suitcase. "Is it safe to leave the business materials in the boot, Mrs. Lee? Or would you recommend I carry them in?"

Corinne took in the sheer volume of paper. Lowndes County wasn't fond of strangers, and it was particularly suspicious of Northern Black men carrying ledgers that dealt with money. "Lowndes County has thieves just like Detroit and Chicago, Mr. Preston, only ours are usually wearing sheriff's badges. If it’s valuable to your work, bring it into the hallway. I lock the front door at nine sharp, and Daddy June sleeps on the cot by the parlor window with an eye open."

"And a ten-gauge loaded with rock salt under the quilt," the porch shadow added helpfully.

Preston smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Rock salt is a persuasive deterrent. Very well, let me take the essentials."

Corinne didn't wait for him to struggle. She took one of the heavy leather cases by the brass handle; it weighed an easy thirty pounds, packed solid with paper. Preston reached for his personal suitcase and a second, slimmer portfolio embossed with gold lettering that caught the porch light: Apex Mutual Life - Southern District.

As they walked toward the stairs, another sound drifted down the gravel lane—a dry, rhythmic rattle that Corinne recognized before she even saw the machine. It was a bicycle, an old Columbia with a rusted basket on the front, pedaled by a skinny boy whose knees poked out like walnuts from his rolled-up dungarees.

"Miss Corinne!" the boy called out, braking with his back pedal and sending a spray of red dust against the gardenia bushes. It was Sonny Robinson, the fourteen-year-old grandson of the woman who washed the linens for the doctor's office over on the east side of town.

"You're out late, Sonny," Corinne said, pausing on the bottom step. "Your grandmama know you're tearing down Pine Street in the dark? Curfew’s in forty minutes."

"Yes'm. She sent me," Sonny panted, leaning over the handlebars, his face shiny with sweat. He dug into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a folded slip of yellow paper. "Mr. Calloway down at the Western Union told me to run this out to you right quick. Said it came through from Montgomery on the six o'clock wire, but he couldn't leave the desk until closing."

Corinne set Preston’s heavy case on the second step and took the telegram. Western Union didn't bring good news to colored neighborhoods after dark; usually, it meant someone had taken sick up North or passed away in Birmingham. She tipped Sonny a nickel from her apron pocket. The boy caught it out of the air, touched his temple with two fingers, spun his bicycle around on the grass, and pedaled furiously back toward the center of town.

"Trouble?" Preston asked softly, standing on the bottom step, his face obscured by the brim of his fedora.

Corinne didn't answer immediately. She smoothed the yellow sheet against her palm under the yellow light of the sixty-watt porch bulb. The printed strips were pasted down crookedly:

MRS CORINNE LEE - PINE VIEW GUESTHOUSE PINE ST
HOLD CORNER ROOM FOR MARCUS VANCE ARRIVING THURSDAY LATE STOP TRAVELING REPRESENTATIVE CRISPUS ATTUCKS CIVIC LEAGUE STOP IMPORTANT MATTERS PENDING STOP WIRE CONFIRMATION IF FULL STOP H WEAVER

Corinne stared at the paper. The words themselves were innocent enough, but the name Crispus Attucks Civic League made the back of her neck prickle. Lowndes County didn't tolerate civic leagues of any sort among its Negro population, let alone organizations named after the first man to shed blood in the American Revolution. In this part of the state, folks who belonged to voter registration groups or civil rights committees didn't advertise it on telegrams handled by white operators at the Western Union.

"H. Weaver," Corinne murmured to herself. Henry Weaver was an attorney she knew in Atlanta, a cautious man who had handled her late husband’s veteran pension claims. Weaver didn't send telegrams unless something was already burning.

"Everything all right, Mrs. Lee?" Preston repeated, stepping closer.

"Just business," she said, folding the telegram twice and sliding it into her pocket right next to her rag. "An old friend. Come inside, Mr. Preston. Let’s get you out of this heat before the mosquitoes carry off your luggage."

The interior of the Pine View Guesthouse was cooler than the porch, smelling cleanly of lemon wax, floor paste, and the faint cinnamon-sugar residue of an apple cobbler baked that afternoon. The hall was wide, with ten-foot ceilings that helped pull the stale summer air upward. An antique walnut coat rack stood by the entrance, alongside an umbrella stand made from an old copper milk can. On the right, the parlor was visible through a set of pocket doors: horsehair sofa, upright piano with yellowed ivory keys, and a framed portrait of Corinne’s late husband, Robert, standing proudly in his Great War artillery uniform.

To the left was the registry desk, a converted roll-top that had once belonged to the local feed store. Corinne stepped behind it, pulled the heavy, cloth-bound ledger forward, and uncapped the bottle of Higgins black ink. She dipped the steel nib and turned the book to face Preston.

"Sign right there, Mr. Preston. Full name, permanent address, and automobile make and license number. County requires the license number, though heaven knows who comes checking it besides the flies."

Preston set his bags down with a soft thud and took the pen. His hand was remarkably steady for a man who had driven four hundred miles on Southern roads. He wrote in a graceful, looping script: Arthur Preston – 4420 South Parkway, Chicago, Ill. – Buick MI-88-4109.

"You're from Chicago, but you sound like you grew up somewhere closer to the red dirt," Corinne noted casually as she pulled a heavy brass key from the pigeonhole behind her. Room 2. The front corner room, looking out over the porch roof and the street.

Preston paused, wiping the pen point on the blotter with mechanical precision. "Macon, Georgia. Left in thirty-two. Found out that a degree from Morehouse was worth about eight cents an hour down here, so I took the Illinois Central north like everyone else. The Apex Company was hiring agents who could talk to church folk without sounding like gangsters."

"Well, the church folk in Lowndes County are careful," Corinne said, handing him the key. "You'll find that out soon enough if you're trying to sell them policies."

"Careful is the only way to stay alive down here, Mrs. Lee," he said, taking the key. "I haven't forgotten that. Even with a Chicago address in my wallet."

"Room 2 is up the stairs, first door on the right. Bathroom is at the very end of the hall. Don't turn the hot water tap too hard; the washer's worn thin and it'll spit at you. I'll bring you up some fresh towels and a pitcher of ice water in ten minutes."

"I am indebted to you." Preston picked up his cases, nodding courteously, and started up the carpeted staircase. He walked with a slight limp that hadn't been noticeable when he was leaning against his car—the tired, dragging gait of a man whose bones were aching from hours behind a steering wheel.

Corinne waited until his footsteps reached the landing above and the door to Room 2 clicked open and shut.

She turned back to the registry. The ink was still wet on Preston’s signature. Beside his name, she noted the time: 8:35 PM. Underneath, she penciled in a light R-4 for Marcus Vance, the man mentioned in the telegram. Room 4 was the small, quiet room at the back of the second floor, the one with the window opening onto the fire trellis and the back garden. If a guest needed to leave in a hurry without walking past the parlor windows, Room 4 was the room you gave them.

The front screen door creaked, then slammed shut.

Daddy June hobbled into the foyer, his walking stick thumping rhythmically on the faded runner. He stopped by the desk, leaned both hands on the horn handle of his cane, and stared at Corinne through milky, cataract-shadowed eyes that were still sharper than most people's.

"You going to take that sign down now?" he asked.

"I have one more coming."

"I saw the paper," he said. "Western Union don't deliver love letters to Pine Street. Who is it?"

"Man from Atlanta. Marcus Vance. Henry Weaver sent him."

Daddy June made a wet, sucking sound through his teeth. "Weaver’s a meddler. A smart meddler, but a meddler all the same. He's up there in Atlanta playing chess with white judges, and he thinks this county works like Fulton County. Down here, they don't play chess. They play with twelve-gauge shotguns and kerosene."

"Weaver wouldn't send a man here unless he needed shelter, June," Corinne said, gathering up a stack of folded huck towels from the shelf beneath the desk. "You want me to tell an Atlanta traveler there's no room for him? Where would he sleep? At the Esso station behind the grease bins?"

"Better behind the grease bins than six feet under the swamp grass," the old man grumbled. "That Detroit car out there has been tracked."

Corinne paused, a towel pressed against her apron. "What do you mean, tracked?"

"White Ford sedan passed the lane twice while you were out there palavering with that insurance fellow. Cruised slow, no lights on. Turned around in the cotton gin lot and went back toward the highway."

Corinne felt a cold drop in her stomach, but her expression remained completely flat. You did not give worry a face in Alabama; if you did, it moved in and stayed. "It could have been teenagers looking for a place to drink beer, June."

"Teenagers don't drive thirty-mile-an-hour with their headlamps blacked out. That was the deputy. Young one—Tate. The one with the boil on his chin and the bad teeth." Daddy June turned toward the stairs, squinting up at the ceiling. "Your Chicago friend have any family down here?"

"Said he was born in Macon."

"He's got the look."

"The look of what?"

"A rabbit that knows the hounds have caught the wind," Daddy June said simply. He thumped his cane on the floor and turned toward his bedroom off the kitchen. "I'm going to bed. Don't unlock that screen door for nobody after nine unless you hear my knock first. Three taps, then two."

"I know the knock, Uncle June."

"Knowing it and remembering it when the glass breaks are two different things," he muttered, vanishing down the dark corridor toward the back of the house.

Corinne took a deep, steadying breath, hoisted the towels, and went up the stairs.

The upper hallway was narrow, its walls covered in floral wallpaper that had faded to a soft, tea-colored yellow over thirty years. The floorboards were pine, uneven in places where the foundation had settled after the big rains of forty-eight, but they were scrubbed white every Tuesday with lye soap and vinegar.

She walked past Room 1—currently empty—and stopped at Room 2. The transom above the door was open an inch to let the air circulate, and through the gap, she could hear the metallic clatter of an adding machine or a typewriter being set down on the small walnut desk.

She tapped softly on the wood with her knuckle. "Mr. Preston? Towels."

The noise inside stopped instantly. The silence lasted three seconds too long.

"Come in, Mrs. Lee," the voice finally answered.

Corinne turned the knob and pushed the door open. Preston was sitting on the edge of the double bed, his coat off, his suspenders hanging loose around his hips. He had opened one of his large leather sample cases on the bedside table. Spread out over the white chenille counterpane weren't life insurance brochures or policy ledgers.

They were photographs.

Corinne's eyes took them in before Preston could sweep his hand over the pile: high-contrast, black-and-white glossy prints of men in work clothes, pictures of rural voting booths with white men standing on the steps holding clubs, and several typewritten lists with red pencil marks drawn through certain names.

Preston moved fast, but not panicked. He casually picked up a newspaper from the floor—the Chicago Defender—and laid it smoothly over the top of the photographs, masking the display.

"My territory files," he said, his voice flat, neutral, giving away nothing. "Very disorganized after the drive. The roads south of Nashville are full of potholes."

Corinne didn't blink. She walked over to the washstand, laid the clean towels on the rack, and poured fresh water from the ironstone pitcher into the matching basin.

"The washcloth is linen, Mr. Preston. Don't use the small hand towel for your boots; there's an old rag in the basket under the stand for that."

"Understood," he said.

Corinne walked to the corner window. She looked down at the gravel drive. Pine Street was empty now. The dust had settled, and the pale moon was rising behind the tangled branches of the pecan trees, casting long, spider-legged shadows across the dirt road.

"You're a long way from Chicago to be organizing territory files, Mr. Preston," she said, her back to him.

"Insurance is an expansive field, Mrs. Lee."

"It is," she agreed. "Especially when the policyholders have a habit of dying before their time."

Preston didn't answer. When Corinne turned back around, he was watching her intently, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the reflection of the bedside lamp so that his eyes were hidden behind twin disks of pale light.

"You have another guest coming tonight?" he asked.

"I might."

"A man named Marcus Vance?"

The question hung in the warm, stagnant air of the room like a drawn knife. Corinne kept her hands folded over the front of her apron. She didn't move an inch toward the door, nor did she back away. In her business, fear was like sugar—if you spilled it, every ant in the county would come running to feast.

"Where would you hear that name, Mr. Preston?"

"Word gets around," Preston said quietly. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped tightly together. "Marcus Vance didn't leave Atlanta yesterday morning as planned, Mrs. Lee."

Corinne felt a knot tighten behind her ribs. "The telegram came from Montgomery an hour ago."

"The telegram was sent from Montgomery, yes," Preston said, his voice dropping to a register that barely carried across the bed. "Marcus Vance didn't send it. Marcus Vance was pulled out of a ditch outside of Tuskegee at dawn yesterday. His automobile was burned to the rims."

The room went dead silent. Outside, a tree frog started up its shrill, grating cry, followed by another, until the yard was filled with the noise.

Corinne stared at the stranger sitting on her guest bed. "Who are you?"

Preston reached slowly into his inner coat pocket, his movements deliberate, showing his empty fingers before he produced a small leather wallet. He flipped it open. It didn't hold an insurance card. It held a brass identification shield engraved with the words: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – Legal Defense & Educational Fund – Special Investigator.

"My name is Arthur Preston," he said plainly. "That much is true. But Marcus Vance wasn't an insurance man, and neither am I. Vance was carrying a list of thirty-four witnesses for a federal civil rights suit against the Lowndes County Board of Registrars. He was supposed to meet me here tonight to hand over the duplicates."

Corinne looked from the badge to the Chicago Defender covering the photographs on the bed. Her voice was ice-cold. "Then why did that wire come to my guesthouse fifteen minutes ago telling me to hold a room for him?"

Preston didn't look surprised; he just looked infinitely older than he had when he stepped out of his Buick fifteen minutes before.

"Because, Mrs. Lee," he said, looking at the door, "whoever killed Marcus Vance has his pocket ledger. And they want to see who comes down Pine Street to meet him."

Corinne did not reach for her apron pocket, where the yellow slip of Western Union paper rested like a hot coal. She did not look toward the window either, though every instinct she had honed over fourteen years of keeping a public house in the Black Belt told her that someone was already out in the tree line, watching the second-story glass.

Instead, she walked over to the washstand, took the porcelain stopper out of the clean basin, and set it down with a click that sounded far too loud in the cramped bedroom.

"Put that brass shield away, Mr. Preston," she said, her voice dropping into the low, even register she used when dealing with drunk railroaders or cousins who had brought knives to a fish fry. "A piece of tin like that won't stop thirty grains of lead. All it does is tell the man holding the shotgun that he doesn't have to explain himself to the coroner."

Preston stared at her for a long second, his jaw tightening until the muscle twitched under his smooth brown skin. But he did as he was told. The leather wallet vanished back inside his breast pocket, tucked away beneath the folds of his fine tropical wool. He carefully gathered the edges of the Chicago Defender, folding the broadsheet over the glossy photographs until the table looked like nothing more threatening than a traveler’s unmade nightstand.

"You aren't surprised," he murmured, watching her hands.

"I run a guesthouse, Mr. Preston. If I spent my days being surprised by the foolishness of men with good educations and poor sense, I would have starved during the Roosevelt administration." She walked to the window and drew the heavy chintz curtains shut, cutting off the view of the driveway. "You brought a dead man's business to my roof without so much as a by-your-leave. You signed my book with a name that is probably being whispered over three different police radios between here and Auburn right now."

"I signed my real name," Preston said stiffly. "I don't operate under aliases. It creates legal complications if an arrest is challenged in the federal appellate courts."

"You won't make it to an appellate court in Lowndes County," she told him flatly. "You'll make it as far as the cypress swamp down by the river landing, where the water is eight feet deep and the catfish don't ask to see your credentials from the NAACP."

She turned from the curtain and pointed toward the small wooden desk in the corner. Tucked beside an empty glass inkpot and a Gideon Bible was a battered, green-paper-covered booklet roughly five inches wide and seven inches tall. It had a white cover with dark-green printing: The Negro Motorist Green Book: 1954 Edition.

"You know what that is?" she asked.

"Of course I do. It’s the reason I’m standing in your room instead of sleeping behind the wheel of my car in a ditch."

"That little book is the only law that works for us south of the Ohio River," Corinne said, stepping closer to him, keeping her voice barely above a whisper. "Victor Green printed it in New York so folks like you could buy three gallons of gas, eat a hot plate of greens, and sleep eight hours without having their heads cracked open with a hickory axe-handle. It isn't a directory for martyrs, Mr. Preston. It is a guide for survival. And every house listed between those covers exists because the woman running it keeps her mouth shut, keeps her sheets boiled, and keeps county politics off her front porch."

Preston leaned back against the headboard of the bed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses had left two red indentations. The fatigue in his face was real, even if his profession wasn't what he’d claimed. "Marcus Vance believed this county was the pivot point, Mrs. Lee. He wasn't some radical with a mimeograph machine. He was an actuary. He spent five years gathering tax records, land deeds, and birth certificates. He proved that out of twelve thousand colored citizens of voting age in this jurisdiction, exactly zero are registered to cast a ballot. Zero. Not a preacher, not a schoolteacher, not a veteran who took shrapnel in Normandy."

"I know how many people vote here," Corinne replied. "I don't need an actuary from Atlanta to tell me the size of the cage I live in."

"Vance had affidavits," Preston pressed, his voice acquiring the sharp, rhythmic cadence of a courtroom attorney. "Sworn statements from thirty-four men who walked up the courthouse steps on the first Monday of last month to take the literacy test. They were asked how many bubbles there are in a bar of soap. They were asked to translate passages from the Alabama State Constitution written in Latin. When they couldn't, Deputy Tate and three others ran them off with blackjacks."

"And Vance thought he could put that in an envelope and mail it to Washington?"

"He wasn't mailing it. He was delivering it by hand to the district judge in Mobile. A judge who happens to be an Eisenhower appointee with an interest in federal procedure. He was driving from Atlanta through Montgomery to rendezvous with me here. I had the car with the northern tags. I had the fuel coupons and the clearance to take the eastern route down through Baldwin County."

"And instead, he stopped outside Tuskegee," Corinne said.

"They ran his Ford off Route 80 near the county line," Preston said, staring down at his polished wingtip shoes. "He hit an oak tree at fifty miles an hour. But the tree didn't put a hole in the back of his skull, Mrs. Lee. And the fire was started from the inside out with kerosene."

The room went thick with quiet again. Downstairs, the grandfather clock in the foyer began its slow, mechanical chime: nine strokes.

Curfew.

Corinne felt a prickle of sweat run between her shoulder blades. In town, the siren on top of the firehouse would be wailing right now, warning every colored person off the pavement. Any Black man caught walking the streets after nine was subject to a twenty-five-dollar vagrancy fine or thirty days on the county road gang. If you were driving a Buick with out-of-state tags, the price went considerably higher.

"The wire," she said suddenly. "Who sent the telegram from Montgomery?"

"I don't know," Preston admitted. "Vance had a contact at the state normal school, a professor named Albright. It could have been him, trying to keep Vance's schedule alive without knowing what happened on Route 80. Or..." He trailed off, looking at the door.

"Or it was the sheriff," Corinne finished for him. "Sheriff Grover has a cousin who works the telegraph office in Montgomery. If they searched Vance’s body and found a note with my address, they’d send a wire ahead to see if the fish bit the hook."

"They don't know I have the duplicates," Preston said, gesturing to the sample cases on the floor. "Vance mailed them to a post office box in Opelika three days ago, before he left Georgia. I picked them up this morning at eight o'clock. If they think Vance's evidence burned in his automobile, they might only be looking for him to verify he's dead."

"Don't flatter their ignorance," Corinne snapped. "Grover isn't smart enough to read an actuary table, but he's got the low animal cunning of a boar hog. If he knows Vance was heading for the Pine View, he won't care what's in your cases. He'll take you out behind the barn, burn your Buick, and tell the circuit judge you made an improper remark to a white girl at the ice house."

She turned toward the door, listening.

The house was creaking in the heat, the ancient timbers settling like tired bones. From the back wing, she could hear the rhythmic, raspy rattle of Daddy June’s snoring—a sound that could wake the dead under ordinary circumstances, but tonight felt terribly fragile. If Daddy June was snoring, it meant he hadn't heard an engine on the gravel yet. His ears were old, but they were tuned to the vibration of Detroit steel on Lowndes County dirt.

"Where is the copy of the Green Book you used to find me?" she asked.

Preston reached into the open sample case and pulled out a fresh, uncreased copy of the 1954 edition, identical to the one on the desk. "I bought it at the train station in Birmingham."

"Give it here."

He handed it to her. Corinne flipped through the thin pages until she found Alabama. Under Lowndesboro/Fort Deposit, there were only two entries: her own house on Pine Street, and a Mrs. Clara Washington who rented two rooms over a dry cleaner's on the other side of the tracks. Clara had passed away three months ago from the dropsy, but the book wouldn't show that until the '55 edition came out next spring.

"If somebody is tracking people using the guide, they know this is the only roof in thirty miles where a stranger can lay his head without someone reporting him to the switchboard operator," she said, looking down at the small print.

It was the great irony of the guide. Victor Green had created it as a shield, a map of safe harbors across a hostile ocean of Jim Crow sundown towns, filling stations that would sell you gas but wouldn't let you use the toilet, and tourist courts with Whites Only neon buzzing in the damp nights. But a list of safe harbors was also a map for the hunters. All a sheriff had to do was spend seventy-five cents on a copy from a colored cab driver, and he had every target in his county neatly indexed by street number.

"I need to leave," Preston said suddenly. He stood up, his tall frame uncoiling from the bed. He reached for his suit coat. "If Grover’s men are coming, I can't be caught here. It will ruin you, and it will lose the affidavits."

"Sit your behind down," Corinne said, not raising her voice by a single decibel.

Preston blinked at her, one arm already halfway down the silk-lined sleeve of his jacket. "Mrs. Lee, I appreciate your hospitality, but you don't understand the gravity—"

"I understand that you have Michigan plates, a tank half-full of gas, and exactly two roads leading out of this county," she said, stepping in front of him. "Highway 80 goes east toward Montgomery, which is where Vance was just killed. Highway 31 goes south toward Greenville, where they keep three state patrol units sitting at the junction day and night. If you start that eight-cylinder engine right now, every dog within two miles will start barking, and you won't make it to the creek bridge before Tate has his bumper against your trunk."

Preston stopped. His hands fell to his sides. "Then what do you propose?"

"I propose you act like an insurance man who has never heard the name Marcus Vance in his life," she said. "Take off your shoes. Unbutton your collar. If anyone comes up those stairs tonight, you are Arthur Preston, policy agent, who got lost on his way from Selma and paid five dollars cash for a bed."

"And the cases?"

Corinne looked at the two heavy leather satchels. They were high-grade cowhide, expensive, the kind of luggage carried by men who had bank accounts in Northern cities. They screamed outside agitator louder than an NAACP pamphlet.

"Pick them up," she commanded. "Quietly. If you bang a brass corner against the baseboard, Uncle June will come down the hall with that scattergun, and he doesn't shoot to warn."

Preston lifted the heavy cases. Corinne opened the door an inch, peered into the gloomy corridor, and gestured for him to follow.

The hallway was pitch-black now, save for the faint amber rectangle thrown through the transom of Room 2. Corinne knew every knot and squeak in the floorboards; she walked on the extreme outside edges, where the joists met the wall, her slippers making no sound at all against the runner. Preston followed her lead, his breath coming in measured, cautious drafts.

She led him past Room 3, past the linen press, straight to the back of the house. Here, the floor dipped slightly where an addition had been thrown on in the twenties. At the end of the hall was a narrow, unpainted door that looked like a cupboard.

Corinne pulled a small brass key from the pocket of her apron—not the guest room key, but an old, flat skeleton key she kept on the same ring as her milk cellar key. She slipped it into the escutcheon and turned it. The mechanism gave a dry snick.

She opened the door. Inside was a tiny landing, two feet square, and a set of steep, unfinished wooden stairs leading up into the attic rafters. The air that drifted down smelled intensely of dried cedar shavings, old wasp nests, and decades of Alabama dust.

"Up," she whispered.

"Mrs. Lee, if they search the house—"

"They won't search the attic unless they have a reason to search the house," she said, her voice sharp. "And if they have a reason to search the house, you're dead anyway, so you might as well die twenty feet higher up where the air is dry."

Preston looked at her for a fraction of a second, the faint light from the downstairs hall catching the grim amusement in his eyes. "You have a formidable bedside manner, Mrs. Lee."

"I have a mortgage to pay, Mr. Preston. Move."

He stepped onto the first stair, ducking his head under the low lintel, and hauled the two heavy cases up after him. Corinne reached out and took his arm before he could climb higher.

"There's an old steamer trunk on the left by the chimney," she instructed. "Covered in green oilcloth. Put the cases inside it, under the quilts. There are two five-gallon demijohns of vinegar against the wall—if you hear wood splintering downstairs, kick one of them over. The smell will cover anything those hounds can sniff."

"Understood."

"And keep your shoes off. The ceiling plaster in my kitchen is eighty years old, and if you drop a nickel, I can hear it in the pantry."

Preston disappeared into the dark rafters. Corinne closed the door, locked it, and dropped the key back into her apron.

She walked back to Room 2, entered, and immediately set about rearranging the space. She took the Chicago Defender and folded it neatly, placing it on the floor beside the nightstand like an ordinary discarded paper. She smoothed out the white chenille counterpane where the photographs had rested, fluffing the feather pillow to show an indentation, as if a tired man had already laid his head down for twenty minutes.

She left the Gideon Bible open to the twenty-third Psalm on the desk, right next to the Green Book. It was a small, theatrical touch, but in Alabama, white men who came looking for trouble were occasionally distracted by scripture; it reminded them, however briefly, that they had to sit in church on Sunday morning next to their wives.

She was just wiping down the surface of the washstand when the sound came.

It was not an engine. It was softer than that—the distinct, muffled scuff of a boot heel against the bottom step of the back porch.

Corinne froze. The rag in her hand stayed motionless against the porcelain lip of the pitcher.

The front of the house faced Pine Street, where the gravel lane made noise under any tire or footstep. But the back of the house opened onto the old scuppernong arbor, where the grass was knee-high and the dirt was packed down by thirty years of chickens and wash pots. Nobody came up the back steps after dark unless they knew the path through the orchard, or unless they had left their car a quarter-mile down the road at the old gin mill and cut across the ditch.

Corinne stepped out of Room 2, pulling the door closed behind her until the latch clicked shut. She didn't lock it. A locked door was an invitation to an axe.

She moved down the hallway, keeping her weight on the outer wall, her slippers skimming the floor. She reached the head of the stairs and looked down into the dark well of the foyer.

The grandfather clock ticked with heavy, indifferent precision. Tock. Tock. Tock.

Then came the knock.

It wasn't on the front screen door. It was on the heavy oak door in the kitchen, three sharp raps followed by a pause. But it wasn't Daddy June’s code. Daddy June knocked three, then two.

This knock was three raps, followed by the metallic scraping of the latch being tested from the outside.

Corinne didn't go down the stairs. Instead, she leaned over the banister, her hand reaching toward the small mahogany shelf mounted to the landing wall. On that shelf sat a heavy brass dinner bell that had belonged to her grandmother—a solid, five-pound piece of cast metal meant to call field hands from two hundred yards away. It wasn't a pistol, but dropped from twelve feet onto a man’s skull, it would do the work of one.

Before she could lift the bell, she heard the kitchen door groan.

It didn't open. Corinne kept a solid two-by-four drop-bar resting in iron brackets across that door every night from sundown to dawn. A mule couldn't have kicked it in without splintering the jamb.

"Corinne," a voice called through the keyhole. It was low, muffled by the wood, but unmistakably female.

Corinne held her breath. She didn't answer.

"Corinne, open up the damn door. I've got dew all over my stockings and my feet are killing me."

Corinne released her grip on the brass bell, a wave of profound annoyance washing over her, immediately followed by a fresh spike of suspicion. She hurried down the stairs, skipping the bottom two steps, and moved through the dining room into the dark kitchen.

She didn't lift the bar. She stood three inches from the thick oak planks, her mouth near the crack of the door.

"Lula?" she whispered.

"Who else you think is wandering around in your weeds with thirty-dollar shoes on?" the voice hissed back. "Unlatch this thing before the mosquitoes drain every drop of blood out of my neck."

Corinne lifted the heavy timber with both hands, easing it out of the iron brackets without letting it thud. She cracked the door an inch, the chain still in place.

Standing on the small back porch, illuminated only by the pale starlight filtering through the scuppernong vines, was a woman dressed entirely inappropriately for Lowndes County at nine o'clock on a Thursday night. She wore a tailored crimson traveling suit with velvet lapels, a wide-brimmed felt hat tilted at an arrogant angle over one eye, and two heavy strands of fake pearls that gleamed against her honey-brown throat. In her right hand, she carried a vanity case covered in simulated alligator skin.

It was Lula Hawkins. Lula had left Pine Street eight years ago to sing in the clubs along Rampart Street in New Orleans, and every time she returned, she brought back three new stories, two less dollars, and an assortment of troubles that usually required the intervention of a preacher or a bondsman.

"What are you doing here?" Corinne hissed, keeping the chain hooked. "The train from Mobile doesn't get to the depot until midnight."

"I didn't take the train," Lula said, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe, looking past Corinne into the dark kitchen. "I got a ride with a gentleman friend. But the gentleman friend decided he wanted to drive all the way to Atlanta tonight, and I decided I didn't care for his conversation, so I got out at the crossroads."

"You walked two miles in the dark in those shoes?"

"I walked one mile. The rest of it I spent ducking into the weeds every time a car came by with a spotlight." Lula pushed against the door with her gloved hand. "Now let me in, Corinne. My instep is swollen like a biscuit."

Corinne hesitated, her eyes scanning the dark yard behind Lula. The fig trees stood motionless in the dead air. Beyond them, the tin roof of the smokehouse reflected the dull silver of the moon. There was no sign of a follower, but out in the country, the things you couldn't see were always the ones that killed you.

She slid the chain off the track and pulled the door open.

Lula slipped inside like a cat, the scent of cheap gardenia perfume and stale cigarette smoke flooding the clean kitchen. Corinne immediately shoved the oak bar back into its iron brackets, then turned to face her visitor.

"You're an idiot, Lula," Corinne said coldly. "A pure, unadulterated fool. Deputy Tate has been riding the roads with his lights off since eight o'clock. If he'd caught you walking the ditch in that red getup, you'd be in the county jail right now trying to explain where you got those pearls."

"Tate didn't see me," Lula said, dropping her alligator case onto the zinc-topped kitchen table and kicking off her high-heeled pumps with two loud thuds. She groaned with immense relief, wiggling her toes through the sheer nylon of her stockings. "That boy couldn't find his own hat if it wasn't pinned to his ears. Besides, I know how to move through these woods. I grew up picking blackberries back here while you were still practicing your scales on that upright piano."

"This isn't eight years ago," Corinne said, keeping her voice low. "Things are tight in the county right now. Tighter than they've been since thirty-one."

"Things are always tight for us, honey," Lula said, walking straight to the pie safe in the corner without asking. She opened the tin-paneled door, inspected the contents, and pulled out a cold buttermilk biscuit, biting into it with sharp, white teeth. "Some things never change. Men are dogs, white folks are crazy, and Corinne Lee's biscuits need more lard."

"Leave my lard out of it," Corinne said, stepping between Lula and the rest of the house. "Who was the man that drove you from Mobile?"

Lula stopped chewing. Her eyes, large and dark under painted eyebrows that arched like bird wings, flickered toward the kitchen hallway.

"Just a man," she said, her tone suddenly losing its casual, theatrical brass.

"Don't lie to me in my own kitchen, Lula Mae. You don't take a ride from Mobile with a stranger, not in the middle of the week, and you don't jump out at the crossroads unless you're running from something worse than bad conversation."

Lula swallowed the biscuit, her throat working hard. She wiped her fingers on her crimson skirt, then looked at Corinne with an expression that had stripped away the New Orleans nightclub polish, leaving only the scared girl who had run away from a tenant farm at sixteen.

"He wasn't a stranger," Lula whispered. "He was a friend of Henry Weaver's."

Corinne’s heart gave a slow, heavy thud against her ribs. "Weaver?"

"He said he was meeting somebody here," Lula said, stepping closer, her voice dropping so low Corinne had to lean in to hear it over the crickets outside. "Said he had business with a man traveling under the name of Preston. He told me if I kept him company on the drive from Montgomery down through the back roads, he'd give me twenty dollars and buy me a ticket back to New Orleans from the Selma depot."

"Who was he, Lula?"

"Said his name was Marcus Vance," Lula whispered.

Corinne didn't breathe. "What did he look like?"

"Dark fellow. Skinny. Had a mustache like a pencil line and wore those little round spectacles with the gold wire. Smelled like hair tonic and paper." Lula reached out and grabbed Corinne’s wrist, her fingers surprisingly strong. "Corinne, something went wrong. We were about five miles outside the county line, near that old wooden church that burned down during the war, and he saw a car sitting on the shoulder. No lights. He told me to get down on the floorboards and stay there. Next thing I know, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and told me to run into the trees and not stop until I hit Pine Street."

"You said he dropped you at the crossroads," Corinne said, her grip tightening on the woman's arm.

"I lied!" Lula’s voice rose slightly, verging on panic, before she caught herself and choked it down. "I lied because I didn't want you to think I was mixed up in whatever that man was doing! I heard shots, Corinne. Three of them. Loud, like a deer rifle. Then I heard an engine scream, and a sound like tin being crushed with a hammer. I ran through the brush until my stockings were in ribbons. I didn't see who was shooting. I just saw headlights spinning around in the dust."

Corinne stared at her cousin. The puzzle pieces were falling into place with a sickening, greasy slide.

Arthur Preston had told her Marcus Vance was pulled out of a ditch near Tuskegee at dawn yesterday. He had told her the car was burned to the rims.

Preston lied.

Marcus Vance hadn't died yesterday morning outside Tuskegee. Marcus Vance was on the road tonight, thirty minutes ago, less than five miles from this house.

Which meant Arthur Preston hadn't come to meet Marcus Vance. Arthur Preston had come to make sure Marcus Vance never arrived.

Corinne stood in the dark kitchen, the smell of Lula's gardenia perfume suddenly suffocating in the June heat. Upstairs, above the plaster ceiling, a floorboard gave a microscopic creak as forty-four pounds of leather sample cases settled into the cedar shavings of the attic floor.

"Lula," Corinne said, her voice dropping into a register that made the younger woman instantly pull her hand back.

"What?"

"Go into Uncle June’s room. Don't turn on the lamp. Sit on the trunk at the foot of his bed, take his spare walking stick, and don't make a sound if you hear glass break."

"Corinne, what’s going on? Who's in the house?"

"A guest," Corinne said softly, her hand already moving toward the iron skillet sitting on the back of the woodstove. "A traveling man from the Green Book. And I believe he’s about to check out."