The Girl from Felony Bay by J. E. Thompson Page B

occasionally won a football game or had a good basketball season, and they would mope around when they lost.
    I knew Custis well enough to know that if I ever decided I liked boys enough to marry one, I wanted him to be like Custis—handsome, funny, honest, and a good friend. I started out shooting straight because I trusted him.
    â€œYou’ve heard of Felony Bay, haven’t you?” I asked.
    Custis nodded immediately. “Of course. I mean, I know it by name. It’s part of Reward, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. “Well, it was part of Reward. Apparently it’s not any longer.”
    Custis cocked his head and gave me a confused look, so I went on. “Bee’s father now owns Reward.”
    Custis looked at Bee and nodded. “You’re lucky. It’s a very beautiful place.”
    â€œYessir,” Bee said.
    I went on. “When I was giving her a tour of the plantation, we found a whole line of No Trespassing signs over by Felony Bay. We thought it was some kind of mistake, so we ignored them and kept going. Then Bubba Simmons spotted us. He’s the Leadenwah deputy, but I guess he was off duty. He threw us off the property.”
    â€œThat’s odd,” Custis said when I finished. “Our firm handled the closing on the Reward sale. I didn’t work on it myself, but I think if the property had been broken up, somebody would have said something, just because it’s so historic.”
    â€œIs it even legal to break up a place like Reward and not tell the new owner?”
    He looked at me for a few seconds, then stood, went to his desk, and typed a series of search terms into his computer. As he read what came up on his screen, he raised his eyebrows.
    â€œInteresting,” he mused. “It says the Felony Bay tract wasn’t actually a part of Reward. It was held under a separate deed.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œThat Felony Bay could be sold separately without affecting Reward Plantation. Technically it’s a separate property.”
    â€œSince when?” I asked.
    Custis was quiet while he typed some more. “Huh!” he exclaimed as he read what came up on his screen. “Apparently it’s been that way since your father put it into a separate holding.”
    â€œDaddy? When?”
    Custis looked at the screen again. “Ten months ago.”
    I tried to hide my shock. I couldn’t imagine a reason Daddy would have broken up Reward and not told me about it. “Do you remember why he did that?”
    Custis screwed his eyes closed and scrunched up his face as he tried to think. “I should, but your dad and I were working on so many other cases around that time.” He opened his eyes and rapped his knuckles on top of his desk. “Was there a lady who had lived on that piece of property for a long time but then moved off?”
    I nodded. “Her name is Mrs. Middleton. She moved when I was really little, and now she lives up the road.”
    Custis nodded. He looked back and forth between us. “I remember now. Have either of you ever heard of something called heirs’ property?”
    We both shook our heads.
    Custis went on. “Okay, a little history lesson. At the end of the Civil War, the Southern economy had been destroyed. The slaves had been freed, but they had no money, no education, and no business skills, and the plantation owners didn’t have much money after the war either, so they couldn’t hire them to do the agricultural work they had always done. So the plantation owners developed a barter system where they offered their ex-slaves plots of land so they would have a place to live and raise their own crops. In return the ex-slaves would help the plantation owners farm their land.
    â€œIn many cases, it wasn’t really clear who owned the land. The legal title to the land remained in the plantation owner’s name, and there was no formal paperwork showing that it