Well, I supposed if I didn’t have the guts to do this, I didn’t have what it took to have the difficult conversations private investigators needed to have.
“I told you that I came down here to Savannah to do some research for a client.” I forced my lips to move in what I hoped looked like a smile. “And normally, I can’t talk about what I do.”
“We know, sugar,” Shadae said. “We don’t expect you to tell us nothin’.”
“I know.” I managed a better smile this time. “But it turns out that the two of you are actually connected to my case.”
Both looked surprised enough that I knew Bradyn hadn’t told them anything about what he thought I was up to. Some of the tension in me loosened.
“I now have permission from my clients to share everything with you, but I’m going to start with the basics, and we can go from there.”
“All right.” Brew put his arm behind Shadae, and she leaned against him.
“Mid-September, I was approached by a lawyer whose firm is representing Carmine and Kathie Douglass.” I watched carefully but didn’t see even a flicker of recognition at the names, but that didn’t surprise me. Even after I gave them Kathie’s maiden name, I doubted they’d know who she was. Their relation was distant. “They wanted me to research Kathie’s family. Her maiden name was Mae, but it has changed over the years.”
“Her people are from Savannah?” Shadae asked.
“Kathie’s grandfather, Gideon Boyd, moved from Savannah to New York City in 1932.”
Shadae laughed. “I don’t know how old you think we are, sugar, but we’re not that old.”
I laughed with her, and the sound eased the tension a little more. “No, I didn’t think you were. I won’t bore you with all the family tree details, but what it boils down to is,” I focused my attention on Brew, “in 1791, your ancestor, Solomon Huxley, married a woman named Deborah Adams.”
He let out a low whistle. “You got that far back, did you? Isaac’s been tryin’ to research both our families for a while now. Am I able to tell him about this?”
“Actually, he sort of knows.” I pressed my damp palms on my thighs. “The genealogy site he uses is the same one that Kathie and Carmine used. Isaac reached out to them when he saw a connection to Kathie Mae. The short version is that Kathie’s ancestor, Deborah Adams, had a child in 1789, prior to her marriage to Solomon Huxley. That daughter’s name was Rachel, and she ended up taking Solomon’s last name. So, even though she and your ancestor, Alexander, both shared the same last name, they were only half-siblings.”
“Not being married don’t mean Solomon wasn’t Rachel’s daddy,” Brew pointed out. “‘Specially back then.”
I nodded. “That’s one of the reasons I had to come down here, to do some digging in things I couldn’t find online.”
“That’s why you were goin’ down to the historical district, checkin’ out churches and the like,” Shadae said.
“It is.” Now that my initial nervousness had faded, I was starting to get that excitement that only came with figuring out a puzzle. “If you want the details, I can give them, but the main point is that the rumor back then was that Rachel’s father was the oldest son of the family who owned the Adams family.”
There was anger on both Brew’s and Shadae’s faces, but no surprise.
“Kathie’s family is descended from Deborah’s daughter, Rachel,” I continued. “I wasn’t hired to prove that Rachel’s father had been a white slave owner. That discovery just…well, it supported the claim I had been hired to research. The claim was that Zachariah and Ester Adams – Deborah’s parents – had both been free when they married in 1771. Free, and they owned a fairly large farm. At the end of or shortly after the Revolutionary War, a white family stole everything from the Adams family, including their freedom, forcing them into slavery until after the Civil War freed them all.”
“Damn.” Brew breathed the word.
The fact that Shadae didn’t scold him for cursing was proof of how shocked they were.
“I don’t see what good knowing that’s gonna do,” Shadae said finally. “Not like we can hold people accountable now for something their ancestors did. If we could, most of the whole country would be sent ‘back where they came from.’”
“You’re right,” I said. “And I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know all the legal terms and stuff, but I wasn’t