Lost Boy Found

by Kirsten Alexander

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of the New York Times bestseller Sold on a Monday, this Southern historical novel based on the true story of a boy's mysterious disappearance examines despair, loyalty, and the nature of truth.

In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns.

The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp.

But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports' own friends, take sides.

As the tramp's kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they'd ever dreamed.

Release date: March 10, 2020

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter One

The three boys bounded through the grass toward the forest, a spray of panicky hoppers glimmering around them, while John Henry recited the passage from Scouting for Boys that approved the adventure. He nodded when he reached the end.

Mary fixed her eyes on the children, one arm raised to block the late-morning sun. “They’ve never gone so far on their own.”

“George wants responsibility.” John Henry smiled at his wife. “We should encourage him.”

“Seven’s no age for responsibility, John.” Nor, she thought, old enough to shepherd a six- and a four-year-old, neither of whom could walk unsupervised to their bedroom at night without veering off to investigate some amusing distraction. An insect, a thud. But she bit her tongue for fear the Scouts had something to say about that, too.

Mary watched her boys slow their pace and enter the forest, lifting their hands and knees as though wading into cold sea. In a blink they were gone, indistinguishable from the dark mess of pine trees, discarded branches and spiky undergrowth.

  

The Davenport family stayed at Half Moon Lake in July. Their Louisiana lake house was smaller than their home in Opelousas, but still impressive: two stories, pale blue, with slate-gray shutters, white trim, a wide porch and a balcony off the main bedroom. The house sat five hundred yards from the lake, which was fringed on three sides by forest, at the top of a clearing, providing the Davenports a dress circle view and unimpeded access to the water. Here, Mary woke to birdsong and the smell of fresh-baked ginger cake, and later played piano while the drawing-room curtains swelled on the breeze. John Henry took breakfast with his wife, read the St. Landry Clarion, the Atlantic Monthly, Outdoor Life, the latest Picayune, then worked on plans to further expand his business. The Davenport boys—George, Paul and Sonny—watched by Nanny Nelly, spent their days playing cowboys and Indians, chasing dun-colored rabbits, and kicking a ball to one another. In the afternoons, John Henry instructed them in an aspect of Scoutcraft.

This summer day was muggy, but oak trees surrounding the house offered enough shade that John Henry, Mary and their guests, Ira and Gladys Heaton and Gladys’s mother, Mrs. Billingham, would sit outside, as John Henry preferred.

“Perhaps air will ease my headaches. Now that my daughter has declared my homeopathics quackery, I’m left to suffer without relief.” Mrs. Billingham fanned herself.

“You know the pastilles help. There’s no reason to resist every modernity.” Gladys turned to Mary. “Eucalyptus and cocaine. They work wonders.”

“Without any relief at all.”

As the group enjoyed their sweet tea, bees harvested nearby crepe myrtle trees, and hummingbirds flew from foxgloves to hollyhocks in search of nectar.

The Davenport boys had joined the adults for a while that morning, squatting near the woodpile with their toy soldiers—unobserved, Nanny Nelly having been permitted a rare afternoon and evening off to visit her mother—until they’d grown restless and begged to go exploring.

“In search of what?” Mrs. Billingham asked.

“Life’s compass,” John Henry replied.

  

The men discussed business: John Henry’s furniture manufacturing company had sold a thousand chairs in the past eighteen months, and Ira Heaton’s stationery company had secured a significant government contract. Gladys chattered about millinery, bemoaned her rust-red hair, envied Mary’s glossy blackness. Mary worried about the boys. She feigned interest when Gladys, holding up an open copy of the Delineator, said, “Here’s the ribbon I mean,” and offered a sympathetic murmur when Mrs. Billingham confided that the pastilles made her pulse race.

When she went indoors, ostensibly to check with Cook that she’d remembered Mrs. Billingham’s aversion to pepper, Mary shared her concern with her housekeeper, Esmeralda. “What if the boys meet with fire ants, snakes, alligators!”

Esmeralda folded her hands over her dusting cloth. “Mr. Davenport’s taught them how to behave in the outdoors. They won’t come to harm.”

“There’s no behavior that fends off an alligator aside from firing a rifle,” Mary said, though Esmeralda had, as always, calmed her.

  

At noon—as John Henry led Ira to the library to show him a recently acquired map of Peru, the women strolled in the garden, and John Henry’s butler, Mason, pulled on his boots to go fetch the boys—George and Paul Davenport walked up the hill without their brother.

Mary stopped by the rose bushes. Gladys and Mrs. Billingham followed suit.

“George,” Mary said. “Where’s Sonny?”

“We thought maybe he’d be here.”

“Why would you think that?”

Mrs. Billingham tsked.

“We looked every other place. Shouted and whistled.”

“He’s no good at hiding. Except this time. Dropped Hop though.” Paul held Sonny’s toy rabbit aloft by its threadbare arm.

“I said we’d name him the winner. Only had to show himself,” George said.

“It’s true, he said that.”

“Where is he, then?” Mary’s voice quickened.

Behind her, Gladys placed her fingertips on her mother’s arm.

“Don’t know.” Paul shrugged.

Mary looked across the grassy expanse and glaring lake to the forest. Nothing moved. She grabbed Paul’s wrist and pushed George’s shoulder to turn him around. “Inside, now.” She called for John Henry as she hurried the boys up the front steps.

  

Sonny wasn’t in the garden. He wasn’t in the thickets or on the rope swing or in the shed. And though John Henry and Ira scoured the forest and lake’s edge with Mason, they didn’t find the boy.

While the adults searched, George and Paul sat on the porch steps, forbidden by Mary from moving one inch.

“He’s hiding to get us into trouble,” Paul said to Esmeralda.

George waved a fly from his face. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know I’m hungry.”

“Hush, both of you.” Esmeralda twisted a tie of her apron until it coiled. “Left your brother out there alone. Should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Mary circled the house, frantic, ran inside to hunt in closets, beneath beds and behind doors, a ring of blackened linen flapping about her ankles. When she knelt on the steps and shook George, demanding he tell her again every word Sonny had said, reducing the boy to tears, Mrs. Billingham insisted Mary lie down.

Esmeralda served ham sandwiches and pastries, made a pot of coffee and, at Gladys’s instruction, added a generous dash of brandy for Mrs. Davenport.

“No, no, no,” Mary said. “No.”

“There’s no cause for alarm,” Mrs. Billingham counseled. “John Henry will find the child.”

But when she could, Mrs. Billingham suggested that Ira drive into town to alert the sheriff.

“The boy’s only been missing a few hours,” Ira said. “He’s probably off frightening small creatures or digging a hole.”

“Digging a hole? Is that what you think children do?” Mrs. Billingham stared meaningfully at the motor car.

Alone in the dark forest, his heart thundering, John Henry looked for signs of his son’s passage: crushed leaves, broken branches, blood.

Chapter Two

At six o’clock, Ira returned from Opelousas with Sheriff Sherman and three of his men. Everyone rushed out to meet the cars. In the overlapping introductions and activity—Cook being told to bring tea, Mason offering his assistance, the men adjusting dusty hats and clammy shirts, Esmeralda glaring at Paul to silence his cheep of “Mister, mister”—the sheriff stood, straight-backed and speckless, as though in the eye of a storm.

John Henry stepped forward to shake the sheriff’s hand, noted his healthy solidity, glints of white in chestnut hair, the thoughtful narrowing of his eyes as he scanned the surroundings, the unforced kindness in his voice when he spoke to Mary.

“My deputy’s coming with dogs. And we have a few hours’ light. We’ll find him.” He pointed two of his men toward the woods and one to the house. “You’ve been to the resort?” he asked John Henry.

“Surely that’s too far?”

“Not if he cut across the hill. I think it’s worth talking to them.”

Once his men had scattered and John Henry and Ira had driven off, the sheriff turned to George and Paul, who were still flanking Esmeralda. “Now,” he said as he crouched down, “how about you tell me exactly what happened out there.”

  

The Starry Lake Resort was one mile east of the Davenports’ Half Moon home by road, but less, as the sheriff said, if Sonny had clambered over the hills. So John Henry and Ira sped down the shaded road, past cotton fields and run-down farmhouses, toward the resort. Where they’d usually comment on dimwitted landowners being stuck on old ways, the increasing number of cattle falling to disease or the frustration of managing Negro workers, they stayed silent.

The resort catered to the area’s wealthiest citizens. Membership was by invitation, referral or bequest. During the past year, the outside walls and columns had been painted and the cedar ceilings, marble mantels and Oriental carpets revived. Tennis courts were added. Local newspapers followed the progress of the renovation. Families picnicked outside the grounds, and the children of local lumbermen stared through the curlicued metal gates. The resort had reopened with fanfare in May, promising an elegant atmosphere reminiscent of the glory days of the South, before the war.

When the afternoons were dry and not too hot, wasp-waisted ladies wearing slippery silk and long strands of pearls ambled beneath magnolia trees, while men of influence stroked their whiskers and discussed the issues of the day: workers’ strikes in England, the trouble in the Balkans, Colonel Gracie’s new book The Truth About the Titanic, a second example—following The Truth About Chickamauga—of his talent for rendering thrilling events dreary (Gracie’s recent death noted then ignored). They discussed how to assist one another’s endeavors, too.

At night, when the wind blew the right way, birch trees shimmied music from the resort through the forest to the Davenport living room. Mary closed her eyes and listened, imagining dancing couples lit by crystal chandeliers, while John Henry stewed about the conversations taking place without him. Important people made important decisions at Starry Lake Resort. For too long, he’d dismissed the resort as inconsequential. But his friend Judge Roy insisted otherwise, and promised he’d nominate John Henry next month. John Henry had ambitious plans, and membership at the resort would be key to their success.

It had never been part of John Henry’s plans to stand on the dirt driveway and rattle those formidable gates in frustration, shouting out for entry to the resort to search for his son. Yet there he was. Ira Heaton pressed his car horn again, stopping at the sight of a dumpy man with a scowl plodding across the lawn toward them.

John Henry’s first encounter with the resort lacked dignity, but he hoped at least the gates would be opened for him. The man spat tobacco on the ground. “Members only.”

Speaking through the bars, John Henry told his story, describing Sonny, and making sure the man understood—if he didn’t already from John Henry and Ira’s appearance—that he was unaccustomed to being denied entry anywhere.

The man lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’ll keep an eye out. And ask in the kitchen and laundry who’s come and gone. We get a lot of deliveries. Could be someone offered him a ride.”

As John Henry walked back to the car, Ira stepped closer to the gate. “You understand that is the very opposite of reassurance?”

“Wasn’t aware coddling strangers was part of my job.”

  

Word traveled that a boy had gone missing at Half Moon Lake, and people from surrounding towns, farms and even a docked showboat volunteered to help. They searched the chapel and school, asked around in local stores. In no time at all, a hundred men, glad of summer’s late light, were spread across the landscape, occasionally raising their hats to wipe their brows with kerchiefs, whacking sticks through the undergrowth, sending grass seeds and mosquitoes into the air. Some rode on twitchy horses, cradling shotguns. Snuffling hounds ran diagonals in front of them.

A beady-eyed tanner called Jackson Lane found small footprints beside the railway tracks, and the searchers swooped, like a flock of starlings, up the hill and into the drier woodland above the lake where the trains cut through. The sheriff told one of the younger searchers to run back to the house and fetch Sonny’s sandals. “Ask the housekeeper, not the mother. And mind your manners.” When the boy returned, breathless and sweaty, the sheriff held the sandals next to the prints. The men craned into a circle and saw the prints were, yes, the right size.

Nobody could agree on why the prints petered out.

“He’s been taken,” Jackson said. “Lifted onto a train.”

“Then why’s there no grown man’s footprints? You saying somebody strong enough to jes’ reach out and swoop him up from a moving train?” one man asked.

“Impossible,” John Henry said.

“There’s no train today,” another chimed in.

“Freight trains go slower,” Jackson said.

The sheriff held one hand up to silence the men. “I’ve told you twice to back off. Y’all hard of hearing?”

John Henry exhaled loudly. Ignoring the sheriff’s instructions, the men had stomped around the prints, snapping twigs and squashing Indian grass, making and perhaps destroying leads. His own children knew better.

Sheriff Sherman asked his deputy to drive to the stationmaster’s house to get the schedule, but he was clearly skeptical of Jackson’s theory. “Even a beanpole like you couldn’t reach out that far from a train, no matter the speed.”

  

All through the night, searchers came into the house in waves, trudging up the hill under a starry sky with only a sliver of moon. The men smelled of whiskey, pine smoke and salty sweat, and lay down in the kitchen and dining room on make-do bedding brought in by the Ladies Aid. Esmeralda spread hessian sacks on the ground for the dogs. The symphony of snores—hound and human—croaking frogs, hooting owls, and music from the resort made the house thrum. The sounds carried to the Davenports’ bedroom, where John Henry slouched for a brief rest in a chair by the window and Mary wept and slept, shook then sat numb, clutching Sonny’s toy rabbit.

Down the hallway, George and Paul sat cross-legged on their beds in the dark.

“He’s too chicken to be out at night,” George said. “Unless he’s really lost, or you said something to make him stay there. Did you say something?”

“Nothing bad,” Paul whispered.

“What’d you say?”

Chapter Three

The following afternoon, Tom McCabe and Eddie Dale arrived at the lake.

“Wish he’d let us come out earlier.” Eddie dropped his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his heel.

“You’ve got plenty of time to get your pictures,” Tom said.

“Spoken like a writer.”

Tom surveyed the scene, taking in the army of men, the exhausted dogs lying in packs, the glossy lake rippled from Negroes dragging heavy nets through it. He smelled the tadpoley muck of roots draped along the lake’s edge, felt warmth rising up from the earth. Tom put his hands in his pockets, jiggling his lucky pennies. Then, instead of heading to the lake to get the facts from the sheriff—like he knew he should—he went to the house to find the boy’s mother.

It wasn’t hard to figure out which woman was Mary Davenport. She sat in a white wicker chair at the front of the house, in the shade of a tree, upright and pale as a lily, ignoring the women who swooshed about her. She’d fixed her eyes on the lake. A breeze blew tendrils of fallen hair from her face, creating a clear line of sight into which Tom intruded.

“Mrs. Davenport? My name’s Tom McCabe. I’m a reporter at the St. Landry Clarion. I’m here with our photographer, Eddie Dale.” He used his hat to point out Eddie, who’d stood his tripod near the lake.

Mary looked at Tom, her attention perfunctory.

“We’d like to tell our readers about your missing boy. One of them might know something.” He waited. “I’m sure he’ll be back home in no time, Mrs. Davenport, no time at all, but I—”

“You think they’ll find him soon?” Mary flicked her eyes up at Tom. Hazel, bloodshot, Tom noted, with a spray of freckles across her nose. “Do you think so?”

And though he had no idea about anything, Tom said, “I’m sure of it, Mrs. Davenport.” He took out his notebook and licked his pencil. “So what’s Sonny like—is he a good boy?” Tom shook his head. “Of course he is. What does he like to do? When I was a boy I was crazy for animals. Chased chickens around the yard, rode the mule though I wasn’t supposed to.” Mary turned her attention back to the lake. “I have a dog now, Mrs. Davenport—he’s named Walter. He’s a terrific dog. Does Sonny like dogs?”

“Sonny loves dogs. He begs his father for one.” Her voice softened. “When Sonny’s found I’ll tell him he can have a dog, any one he likes.”

“I’ll bet you will. And what boy wouldn’t love that.”

Esmeralda came out of the house and shooed Tom away. “Mrs. Davenport needs quiet.”

Tom didn’t like being spoken to that way by a Negro, but neither Mary nor her attendants reprimanded Esmeralda. Tom dipped his head to Mary and walked down the hill to Eddie, who was pulling himself out from under his camera cloth.

“This is Jackson Lane.” Eddie nodded at the man in front of his lens. “You’ll want to talk to him—he found a clue.”

“And I can too reach a boxcar from there,” Jackson said. “Lay down and tested it.”

“Bully for you,” Tom muttered, and rolled his eyes at Eddie. How many times had he told him to steer clear of the crazies?

A dozen yards away, John Henry boomed out instructions to the Negroes standing thigh-deep in the lake. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Mary stride toward her husband. He hoped she didn’t say a reporter had planted ideas in her head about a dog. If he wanted to get the story he’d need to win over all the players. Huh, but there was something telling: as Mary moved closer to John Henry he turned, sensing her, and his hand and hers rose up and reached out through the air for its mate.

  

As the sun dropped behind the hills, the lake changed color from moss green to fleshy pink, purple, resting at black. Slow-moving searchers made fires and lit lanterns. Smoke whorled against the spangled sky and amber firelight cast strange shadows on the men’s faces. To John Henry, watching from the porch, the scene resembled a Bible School painting, a Hell of barking dogs, black men and wild flames, in which his boy wandered, lost.

Local women shuttled chicken, yams and corn to the trestle tables set up on the lawn and put a tray out for leftovers to give to the colored men. John Henry was close enough to hear the women talking to one another, blending practical and personal comments, sharing anecdotes.

All of this to an unseemly score of ragtime tunes drifting out from the resort.

It was remarkable to John Henry how quickly an abnormal situation had become normalized, how by the second night there were systems in place for eating and sleeping. He approved of the methodical intelligence of it but struggled to control his rising panic. None of this noisy industry had yielded anything, but it would. It must.

  

Meanwhile, Mrs. Billingham stood at the living-room window, one hand holding back the heavy curtain so she could watch. “I’m certain they haven’t put out enough food,” she said to Gladys, then abandoned her post to collapse into the nearest armchair. “But I’ll spend what energy I have caring for Mary.” She rubbed her worked wrist. “What an awful ordeal.”

“So awful. I do hope they find him soon.”

Mrs. Billingham glanced at Mary, who had unintentionally consumed enough alcohol to fall asleep on the sofa, her face squashed into a cushion, another skirt ruined. “Ring the bell, Gladys. I’ll have Esmeralda help Mary to her room.”

Gladys was tapping her boot in time to what she could hear of the distant Joplin tune.

“Gladys.”

“Yes, yes.” Gladys, pouting, walked across the room and rang the bell. “Another night ruined because of one naughty boy. I’m not sure I ever want children.”

*  *  *  

“Tell me,” George insisted, again. It was too hot to sleep. They knelt on the wooden floor, side by side, and stuck their heads out the window in the hope of seeing some of the action, but the backyard was empty.

Paul folded his arms on the sill. “What does it matter? They’ll look for him anyhow.”

“Just tell me.”

Knowing that George would keep at him like a woodpecker, Paul gave in. “I told him he wasn’t our brother. That we were only letting him stay till his real family came back from a war. And then he’d have to go live with them in the North and we’d never see him again and good riddance because I was sick of him following me like a bad smell.”

“What war?”

“I made that up.”

“You made all of it up.” George punched his brother in the arm. “Idiot.”

“I didn’t know he’d run off forever.” Paul’s eyes filled with tears. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“No. He can’t even buckle his shoes.” George stood up. “I’m telling Pa.”

“Don’t! It won’t make any difference.”

George figured this was probably true. The adults would search for Sonny until they found him, no matter what Paul had said. And if Paul admitted he’d scared Sonny, he’d be made to sit alone and think about what he’d done, banned from playing games, and George would be left with nothing to do. That wouldn’t be fair. He glared at his brother. “You’ve done a lot of dumb things, but this is the dumbest.”

Chapter Four

Thick clouds covered the sky and heavy midsummer rain fell, making the search harder. Day after day, men trod across gummy mud and slippery grass, and sought to keep memories of comfortable beds at bay.

If there’d been other footprints they were washed away, along with any scent of the boy. Without a doable task, the dogs became fretful and undisciplined, chased squirrels darting for cover, played deaf to their owners’ calls. Bill O’Sullivan’s setter was snatched by an alligator when the dog padded too close to the water’s edge, nose down, not seeing the serpentine eyes in the lake’s pocked surface. Bill shot at the gator as it yanked his fine-boned setter into the lake, but in a flash there was nothing to shoot at other than trampolining water.

Men came from Crowley, Alexandria and Baton Rouge. Each train that stopped near Half Moon Lake collected sodden searchers to return them home and delivered a fresh batch of helpers. When the trains stopped for the night, the men slept o. . .