Tru and Nelle Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Case of Mistaken Identity

  The Prince and the Pauper

  Island of Misfits

  Too Hot for Mayhem

  Bamboozled

  A Close Call

  Running the Gauntlet

  The Cold Hard Truth

  A Secret Plan

  Headquarters in the Sky

  The Hound of Monroeville

  Something Fishy

  The House of Mystery

  The Big Break

  A Rock-Solid Case

  The Usual Suspects

  Bad Day in Mudtown

  Out of the Frying Pan

  Playing Hooky

  Showdown

  Playtime’s Over

  Little Bit o’ Trouble

  The Smoking (Rubber-Band) Gun

  Into the Snake Pit

  Glow Bugs and Pointy Hats

  Blazing Glory

  An Omen and a Break

  Stakeout

  Caught

  Judgment Day

  Writers and Beauty Queens

  Reprieve

  Banished

  The Last Hurrah

  Inviting the Question

  All Hallows’ Eve

  Uninvited Guests

  A Mystery Solved

  Goodbyes

  Other Stories

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by G. Neri

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Cover art © 2016 by Sarah Watts

  Cover design by Whitney Leader-Picone

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Neri, Greg.

  Tru and Nelle / written by G. Neri.

  p. cm.

  Based on the real-life friendship of Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee.

  Summary: In their small town of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1930, misfits Tru and Nelle strike up a friendship and find a mystery to solve when someone breaks into the drugstore and steals some candy and a fancy brooch.

  ISBN 978-0-544-69960-1

  1. Capote, Truman, 1924–1984—Juvenile fiction. 2. Lee, Harper—Juvenile fiction. [1. Capote, Truman, 1924–1984—Fiction. 2. Lee, Harper—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories. 5. Monroeville Ala—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.N4377478Tr 2016

  [Fic—dc23

  2015012612

  eISBN 978-0-544-82932-9

  v1.0316

  PHOTO CREDITS

  Page 318: Truman, age eight. (Photographer unknown, permission given by The Truman Capote Literary Trust. Photo from The Truman Capote papers at the NYPL Archives.)

  Nelle Harper Lee, 1948 Corolla Yearbook. (Photographer unknown, permission given by The W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama.)

  Page 320: Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote fixing plates in the Deweys’ kitchen, 1960. (Photographer unknown, permission given by The Truman Capote Literary Trust. Photo from The Truman Capote Papers at the NYPL Archives.)

  For Edward

  Art is a lie that tells the truth.

  —Picasso

  1

  A Case of Mistaken Identity

  Monroeville, Alabama—Summer, sometime in the Great Depression

  When Truman first spotted Nelle, he thought she was a boy. She was watching him like a cat, perched on a crooked stone wall that separated their rambling wood homes. Barefoot and dressed in overalls with a boyish haircut, Nelle looked to be about his age, but it was hard for Truman to tell—he was trying to avoid her stare by pretending to read his book.

  “Hey, you,” she finally said.

  Truman gazed up from the pages. He was sitting quietly on a wicker chair on the side porch of his cousins’ house, dressed in a little white sailor suit.

  “Are you . . . talking to me?” he said in a high wispy voice.

  “Come here,” she commanded.

  Truman pulled on his cowlick and glanced across the porch to the kitchen window. Inside, Sook, his ancient second cousin (thrice removed), was prepping her secret dropsy medicine for curing rheumatism. Sook normally kept a close eye on Truman, but at that moment, she was humming a song in her head, lost in thought.

  Truman stepped off the porch because he was curious about who this little boy was. He’d made no friends since arriving at his cousins’ house two weeks ago. It was early summer and he yearned to play with the boys he saw making their way to the swimming hole. So he straightened his little white suit and wandered slowly past the trellises of wisteria vines and japonica flowers until he came upon the stone wall.

  Truman was taken aback. He scrunched up his face; he’d been confused by Nelle’s short hair and overalls. “You’re a . . . girl?”

  Nelle stared back at him even harder. Truman’s high voice, white-blond hair, and sailor outfit had thrown her for a loop too. “You’re a boy?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Well, of course, silly.”

  “Hmph.” Nelle jumped off the wall and landed in front of him—she stood a head taller. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Seven.”

  “You smell funny,” she said, matter of fact.

  He sniffed his wrist while keeping his eyes glued on her. “That’s from a scented soap my mother brought me from New Orleans. How old are you?”

  “Six.” She stared at the top of his head then put her hand on it, mashing down his cowlick. “How come you’re such a shrimp?”

  Truman pushed her hand away. “I don’t know . . . How come you’re so . . . ugly?”

  Nelle shoved him and his book into the dirt.

  “Hey!” he cried, his face bright red. His precious outfit was now dirty. Seething, he jutted out his lower jaw (with two front teeth missing) and scowled at her. “You shouldn’ta done that.”

  She grinned. “You look just like one of them bulldogs the sheriff keeps.”

  He pulled his jaw back in. “And you look like—”

  “Just what on earth are you wearing?” she asked, cutting him off.

  It should have been obvious to her that he was wearing his Sunday best—an all-white sailor suit with matching shoes. “A person should always look their best, my mother says,” he huffed, scrambling to his feet.

  She giggled. “Was your mother an admiral?”

  She glanced at the discarded book on the ground and started poking at it with her bare foot till she could see its title—The Adventure of the Dancing Men: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.

  “You can read?” she asked.

  Truman crossed his arms. “Of course I can read. And I can write too. My teachers don’t like me because I make the other kids look stupid.”

  “Cain’t make me look stupid,” she said, snatching the book off the ground and scanning its back cover. “I can read too, and I’m only in first grade.”

  With that, she turned and climbed back up the wall.

  “Hey, my book!” he protested. “I didn’t say you could take it!”

  She stopped and considered Truman until something behind him caught her attention—Sook was fanning smoke out the kitchen window. Nelle squinted at Sook, then back at him. “Say, Miss Sook ain’t your mama—she’s way too old. And I know her brother, Bud, ain’t your pa neither. Where your folks at?”

  Truman looked back at the house. “She’s m
y older cousin on my mother’s side,” he said. “So’s Bud and Jenny and Callie too.”

  “I always thought it strange that none of ’em ever got married or nothin’,” said Nelle, watching Sook. “And now they’re still all living together just like they did when they was kids—even though they’re as old as my granny.”

  “That’s Cousin Jenny’s doing. She’s the boss of all of us, what with running the hat store and the house at the same time—she makes sure we all stay family.”

  “Well, why do you live here?” she asked.

  “I’m just staying here for the time being. My daddy’s off making his fortune. He’s a . . . entre-pren-oor, he calls it. I was working with him on the steamboats that go up and down the Mississippi, but then the captain told me I had to leave. So Sook and them are watching me for now.”

  “Why’d they kick you off a steamboat?”

  “Because . . .” He weighed his words carefully. “Because I was making too much money,” he said finally, fiddling with his oversize collar. “See, my daddy brought me onboard to be the entertainment. I used to tap-dance while this colored guy, Satchmo Armstrong, played the trumpet. People were throwing so much money at me, the captain got mad and told me I had to git!”

  Nelle seemed skeptical. “You’re lying. Let’s see you dance, then.”

  Truman looked at the soft dirt he was standing on. “I can’t here. You need a wood floor to tap on. And besides, I don’t have on my dance shoes.”

  Nelle stared at his clothes. “Who gave you them funny clothes anyways?” she asked.

  “My mama bought them in New Orleans. That’s where we come from.”

  No boys she knew ever wore anything like that. “Well, they sure do dress funny down there in New Or-leeeens. Is that where your mama’s at now?” she asked.

  Truman stared at his feet. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Well, for land’s sake, why ain’t you staying with her then?” she asked.

  Truman shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Suit yourself,” said Nelle. “Say, what’s your name anyways?”

  “Truman. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Nelle. Nelle is Ellen spelt backwards. That’s my granny’s name. You got a middle name?”

  Truman blushed. “Maybe. What’s yours?”

  “Harper. What’s yours?”

  Truman’s face turned even redder. “Um . . . Streckfus,” he said, embarrassed.

  Nelle looked mystified, so Truman explained. “My daddy named me after the company he worked for—the Streckfus Steamship Company.”

  Nelle choked back a laugh. “Well, I guess you wasn’t kidding about that boat.” She was going to say something else but changed her mind. “Okay, then, see ya ’round.”

  She jumped off the wall onto the other side.

  “Hey! What about my book?” he yelled after her.

  She was already running back to her house. “You’ll get it when I’m good ’n’ done with it, Streckfus!”

  When Truman wandered back to his house, he told ol’ Sook about his odd encounter with Nelle. She just shook her head. “Poor child. Her daddy works all the time and her mama’s . . . well, she’s a bit sick in the head.”

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  Sook glanced over at Nelle’s house, running her hands through her thinning gray hair. She was small and slight but full of life—and opinions. “Her mama acts real peculiar sometimes—wanders the streets saying the strangest things to people. Some nights, she’ll be playing her piano on the porch at two in the morning, waking up everyone in the neighborhood. Some say it’s to block out the voices in her head.”

  “Can’t she take some of your dropsy medicine for that?” asked Truman.

  She shook her head. “Some things can’t be cured—even by my special potion.” Sook leaned in and whispered to him, “Sometimes her mama forgets to cook supper, and poor Mr. Lee and his children end up eating watermelon for dinner!”

  No wonder Nelle acted strange.

  That night, Truman went through his collection of books and picked out one just for her: a Rover Boys adventure called The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine.

  She’ll like this one, he thought. He left it on top of the stone wall for her.

  When he woke up the next morning, the book was gone.

  2

  The Prince and the Pauper

  It was a slow morning in the tiny town of Monroeville, Alabama, and that’s saying something. A whole day had come and gone and Truman hadn’t seen or heard from Nelle. He sat on the porch dutifully watching her house, with its gingerbread ornamentation and rusty wind vane. The oaks surrounding her home drooped with Spanish moss limp from the heat. Only a beat-up Hoover car being towed by a couple of old ponies seemed to offer any excitement.

  The only folks outside in the sun were dark-skinned workers mowing lawns or sweeping sidewalks with their dogwood-brush brooms. Occasionally, blacksmith hammers would ring out in the alleyways and then go silent.

  Truman got bored of waiting for her and wandered down the red-dirt roads that passed through the surrounding cotton fields and cattle pastures, then ambled along the creek, looking at the buzzards circling high overhead. After a spell of smelling fragrant chocolate vines and trying to convince the mockingbirds to copy his calls, he headed back home.

  By the afternoon, he was sitting in the shade of his porch again, fanning himself in the numbing heat. He fell asleep to the scents of primrose and azalea that filled the yard. He awoke when the high-pitched scream of the sawmill whistle blew. He stretched out like a lazy cat, and it was only then that he noticed the two books he’d loaned Nelle sitting on the side table.

  He shot upright, looking around for her, but no one was in sight. When he picked the books up, he spotted a tiny pocket dictionary underneath them. On its red cover, it said: The New Webster Dictionary and Complete Vest-Pocket Library—45,800 Words. He cracked it open.

  On the inside title page was handwritten: To Nelle—The power of words can cause wars or create peace. Use yours wisely.—A.C. Except Nelle was crossed out, and in childish pencil, someone had written Bulldog instead.

  The next day, Truman was back on his wraparound porch being served sweet tea and cakes by Sook. He was dressed in a little suit and tie, and his wispy blond hair was pressed neatly against his forehead. She was in her usual blue gingham dress and white apron.

  Sook had been his only companion since he’d arrived in Monroeville. Truth be told, everyone in Monroeville lived on farmer’s hours—awake at sunrise, asleep by eight—except for Truman and Sook. While the other cousins all went to work during the week, the two odd ducks remained at home, sometimes with their part-time cook, a black woman named Little Bit.

  Truman was treated by everyone like a delicate blue-blooded prince. No one could ever imagine him hitching a mule or chopping cotton under the hot sun, so, like they did with Sook, they just let him be.

  His and Sook’s job was to feed the chickens or pick the scuppernong grapes that grew along the fence made of animal bones that Cousin Jenny had built in the back. Sometimes they would walk the woods searching for herbs for Sook’s special potions.

  On Sundays, they’d pass the time making kites and decorating them with pictures from old magazines. In between, they’d laze about on the porch, where Sook would tell him stories or read the funnies out loud or generally just plain spoil him.

  Sook was reading Little Orphan Annie to him when she looked up and smiled. “Why, hello, Miss Nelle. Come for tea?”

  Nelle was covered head to toe in dirt and wearing torn overalls. Her eyes were stuck on Truman’s neatly pressed outfit. “Ah don’t think I’m dressed for it, Miss Sook,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, nonsense, Miss Nelle. No need to impress the likes of us. Miss Jenny tends to dress Tru up but he ain’t fancy inside. He likes to eat hot biscuits with bacon drippings an’ mayhaw jelly as much as the rest of us.”

  She heard Nelle’s stomach grumbling. “I
know you must like cake, dear. Would you care for some?” Sook held up the sweets for her to see.

  Nelle’s mouth practically watered. “Well . . . maybe. Just a bite, ma’am.” She stepped up onto the porch and noticed her dirty feet. “I can just sit here on the steps, thank you, ma’am.”

  She sat and ate her cake while Sook continued to read the comics out loud. Truman watched Nelle devour the whole slice in three giant gulps. When she was done, she stood up as if she were about to leave. But then she just stayed put.

  “How’s your mama doing?” asked Sook, trying to make small talk.

  Nelle furrowed her brow and stared at the ground. “She’s away for a spell, down on the Gulf getting the treatment, Miss Sook. Daddy says she’ll be good as new when they let her out.”

  “Out of where?” asked Truman.

  Sook shot him a look that told him not to say anything more. “That’s good, dear. Even I need a rest now and then, otherwise I’d go crazy too—”

  Suddenly, Sook turned beet red. “Oh, look—we’re all out of cake. I’ll go get some more.” She excused herself, whispering into Truman’s ear, “Be nice.”

  Truman sat alone with Nelle, not sure what to say. He could feel the pocket dictionary she’d given him weighing down his coat. Maybe they could play a word game, since he’d been memorizing interesting words all morning. But then he had a better idea.

  “Would you like another book to read?”

  Her eyes lit up.

  3

  Island of Misfits

  Truman took Nelle through the huge rambling house, which was decorated with all sorts of finery that his older cousin Jenny had collected over the years: ancient paper roses, delicate tchotchkes of all shapes and sizes, glass cases filled with fine china and silverware from all over the world.

  They walked through the main room past two majestic pillars that rose to the high ceiling. In the dining room, they found Cousin Jenny herself, going through pages of her accounting ledgers. Even though she was past fifty, she was still pretty, with milky-white skin and reddish hair tied up in a bun.