“Do you think we ought to change what we’re doing?” Carla asked her partner. “I mean, with all the publicity we’re getting, the word will eventually get there ahead of us. If we keep trying to pick up guys as a twosome, sooner or later one of them is bound to recognize us. There have been a lot of stories about us in the papers.”
“Yeah, but the articles weren’t on the sports page,” said P. J. Purdue. “So most men will never notice. Besides, I think it adds to the thrill of the hunt to warn the prey. It gives them a sporting chance to escape.”
“I thought we were the prey,” said Carla. “I thought the whole idea of this was for us to escape, so that we can end up somewhere safe like Canada, with nobody out looking for us. We were going to get jobs, remember? The robberies were just supposed to provide us with money and transportation so that we could get away. But instead of making a straight shot north, you’re tooling around the southeast hunting up more victims.”
P. J. Purdue shrugged. “It’s fun. It’s about time somebody taught men a lesson.”
Carla glanced at the clock. She had hoped to get an early start, but now it was only two hours until checkout time, and Purdue was showing no inclination to leave. “But don’t we have enough money yet, P. J.? I’ll bet if we drove nonstop, the banker’s car could get us all the way to Canada.”
The leering face of a cartoon wolf appeared on the television screen, and three determined-looking pigs prepared to hit him over the head with a mallet. Purdue set down the remote, and leaned back on her pillow to watch. “Canada?” she said. “Oh, we’ll get there, but I have a few more scores to settle on the way.”
Geoffrey’s progress through the downstairs rooms of the Dolan mansion had been slow, and largely conducted in an ominous silence, broken only by the scratching of the pen in his silver notepad. His cousin Bill had confined his remarks to announcements on the order of, “And this is the dining room,” but as a conversational gambit, it was not a success.
After three rooms of frosty forbearance, Bill finally burst out, “I’m sure you don’t approve, Geoffrey, but Powell and I don’t want to be poster children for Southern Living, which is just as well because we couldn’t afford it. We just want a halfway decent law office so that we can attract a better class of client. Why are you peering up that fireplace?”
“Checking for loose bricks,” said Geoffrey patiently. “If there’s any deterioration of the chimney brickwork, the fire won’t draw, and you could end up with a room full of smoke—or worse. However, if you have a body stuffed up a fireplace somewhere, and you don’t want me to discover it, you have only to say so.”
“No. No,” muttered Bill. “Feel free. Just don’t blame me if you get bats in your hair. Though I doubt that they’d do such a thing to you. Professional courtesy.”
Geoffrey strolled away without dignifying that remark with so much as a glance. Bill called out after him. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think it’s a pity that you bought it,” said Geoffrey. “Oh.”
“Because in the right hands, this house could be a masterpiece.”
Bill brightened a bit. “Well, maybe someday, when we get on our feet financially, we can put some money into renovations.”
“Oh, money!” Geoffrey waved aside financial considerations. “That’s hardly the issue here. Would you carpet the entrance hall?”
“Uh—I guess so.”
“What about the walls? Photographs?”
Bill considered it. “Well, maybe a couple to set the tone. We have one of A. P. shaking hands with Senator Robb at a banquet, and I have an autographed picture of Meg Ryan. Bought it on the Internet. Somebody might steal that one, though.”
Geoffrey’s eyes sparkled. “You’ll have waiting room furniture. Sofas and whatnot. What sort of upholstery were you thinking of getting?”
“Something sturdy,” said Bill promptly. “Something that doesn’t show dirt. We don’t want to have to replace it every six months. Maybe some rough fabric with metallic threads.”
Geoffrey closed his eyes dramatically. “Of course,” he said. “Anything else? Don’t spare me. Plants? Plastic, of course. Bowling trophies?”
“Well, in my office I have a stuffed groundhog wearing judge’s robes. He’s a real conversation piece.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Geoffrey with feeling. “And you want to attract well-to-do clients. I have made my point.”
“What point?”
“You have scored absolute zero on the test for style and good taste. In fact, you owe points in that category. This has nothing to do with money. It is your judgment that is faulty. Large amounts of money would only make it worse. Then you might gild the groundhog statue and carpet the walls.”
Bill blinked. “Well,” he said, “I had thought of asking Mother to give me a few pointers, but as long as you’re here, if you want to make any suggestions, go ahead.”
“Suggestions? It is past that. Drastic measures are called for. I shall direct the entire project.” Geoffrey shuddered. “Someone must save you from yourself before you turn this house into an eight-thousand-square-foot double-wide.”
Edith came into the room in time to hear this last speech. “He saw the groundhog, didn’t he?” she asked Bill.
Bill nodded. Belatedly remembering his manners, he added, “Edith Creech, this is Geoffrey Chandler. You’ll probably be seeing more of him.”
Edith looked appraisingly at the tall young man in an impeccably cut blazer with a silk tie knotted over a Turnbull & Asser shirt. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Are you a decorator or a defendant?” she asked.
Geoffrey smiled. “I’m sure I deserve to be both,” he said.
“Geoffrey is my cousin. He is not the black sheep of the family: He’s the Judas goat. Was there something you wanted, Edith?” Bill had noticed that she was carrying the large earthenware jar that usually sat on the kitchen counter.
“Yes. Where’s the sugar? I could have sworn this thing was full.”
“I put some in my tea this morning,” said Bill.
“I bought five pounds on Monday,” said Edith. “And I can’t find a single spoonful in that kitchen. I thought you might be lining the cat box with it.”
Bill shrugged. “The bag probably got put away somewhere. It will turn up. Anyhow, Geoffrey is going to help us decorate the place, so why don’t you show him the upstairs while I return a few phone calls.” The only calls all morning had been two wrong numbers, but if it meant getting away from Geoffrey, Bill would return them.
A. P. Hill had left Richmond, heading south on I-85, and for a few miles she actually thought about going home. If she stayed on 85 until it intersected with Highway 58 west in Emporia, Virginia, it would be a straight shot home, and she would reach Danville in less than two hours. She ought to be back there helping Bill and Edith fix up the new offices. She was sure that Bill had been hurt by her apparent indifference to his cherished project, but she couldn’t very well explain her preoccupation. A. P. Hill had never been a person to shirk her responsibilities, and her present dereliction of duty was costing her sleep and worry, but she reminded herself how important it was to settle this business with Purdue before circumstances got beyond her control and made a mess of her life. The real reason that the thought of returning to Danville was so appealing to her, though, was the fact that she dreaded the visit she was about to make.
She tried to remember everything she had ever known about Patricia Purdue.
“Hey, Am-eee, whatcha gonna do? It’s Saturday night.” She pictured the scene in her mind. Williamsburg. A Saturday night in early fall. A. P. Hill had been a sophomore in college, spending the evening of a football weekend alone in her dorm room when suddenly the little chicken hawk body had appeared in the doorway, jaw set, eyes narrowed, with a drill sergeant’s scowl—the customary expression of P. J. Purdue.
“It’s A. P., Patty,” Amy Powell Hill had replied without looking up from her book. “My family calls me Powell.
Either one will do.”
She was sitting on the bed in her dorm room, savoring the silence that meant everyone else had gone out for the evening. It must have been obvious that she had no plans: she was wearing an X-large T-shirt that came down to her knees and the ballet shoes she wore as bedroom slippers. As always, Purdue was wearing her customary black sweatshirt and sweatpants, a terrorist organization of one.
Uninvited, Purdue came in and perched on the end of the bed. “You know, if you were going to keep your nose in a book for four years, you could have gone to correspondence school.”
“Inferior degree,” muttered Powell Hill, turning a page. “I want to go to law school.”
“I intend to go to law school,” said Purdue. “I come from a line of Virginia lawyers that goes all the way back to the House of Burgesses.”
“Probably what prompted Patrick Henry to say, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ ”
Purdue ignored the remark and the frown that accompanied it. “My grandfather is a judge.”
“What about your father?”
“He was a pilot. Killed in a training mission at Cherry Point. My mother is dead, too. So the judge raised me to be a Purdue.” She grinned. “He didn’t set much store by Southern belles. I was the last of the Purdues, and by damn, I had to amount to something more than a pretty face. Just as well.”
Powell Hill nodded. Just as well because Purdue wasn’t a pretty face. She was short and solid and pugnacious in an era when sex symbols were tall and willowy.
“I’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my room,” said Purdue. “You do know how to drink, don’t you?”
With a sigh A. P. Hill closed the book. If Purdue was in a sociable mood, she wasn’t going to get much studying done anyway. Besides, although she would never have admitted it, she was tired of spending her evenings alone. Without another word she followed Purdue down the hall to a spartan single room whose outstanding feature was the fifth of bourbon on the desk. Purdue poured a generous measure into two plastic William & Mary cups, topping it up with Coke.
“To law school,” said Purdue, raising the cup.
“Law school,” echoed A. P. Hill. She took a small sip of her drink and held her breath to keep from coughing. Purdue mixed drinks with a heavy hand.
“You’re not bad-looking for the elf type, U. P. S. Hill,” Purdue was saying, studying her with a clinical eye. “Some makeup would fix that washed-out-blonde look, but you really ought to spend more than five dollars on a haircut, you know. I don’t bother, but if I had your potential, I might make the effort. So … why don’t you?”
“I have an agenda,” said Powell Hill. “Right now, dating has no part in my plans.” She held up a lank strand of short, straw-colored hair. “This keeps it simple. It’s like saying no before anybody even asks you.”
“You’re descended from some general, aren’t you?”
“Yes. A. P. Hill. The initials are kind of a family tradition. My brother’s name was Andrew. When I was a child they called me Amy at home, but I hated it, so I use my initials.”
“So, what about your family? Don’t they want their little blonde elf to be a cheerleader?”
“Maybe.” When they can be bothered to notice me, thought A. P. Hill. It was probably the effect of the Jack Daniel’s. Powell Hill made a point of never talking about her personal life with anyone, but Purdue seemed to be a kindred spirit, and suddenly the urge to air her thoughts was irresistible. She leaned back in the plastic chair by Purdue’s study desk and moved her cup in time to her words.
“My folks had a boy to pin their hopes on, so I was pretty much an afterthought. They shunted me off to ballet when I was little, and they bought me a canopy bed and a lot of stuffed animals without really trying to see who I was at all. I might have been a doll out of a catalog. Then when I was ten, my brother died in a car wreck. My folks split up, and I didn’t see much of my dad after that.”
“Yeah,” said Purdue. “Sometimes I think your dad dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a kid. What if he lives and he doesn’t want to see you? That’s rough.”
“I started getting interested in grades and careers after my brother died. I guess I thought if I took over the boy’s role, and became what he was supposed to be, my father would love me.”
“Did it work?”
“No. When Dad remarried, his new wife came with a pretty, giggly daughter in tow. She’s a year younger than I am, and she might as well be a Barbie doll. He’s always talking about Kim. When I made valedictorian, he wrote back to say that Kim had been asked to do a commercial for the local car dealership.” She sighed. “Apparently, that outranked my four-point-oh grade point average.”
“No,” said Purdue. “It’s never that easy with sick bastards like him. He’s probably driving Kim crazy by bragging to her about what a brilliant scholar you are. So he makes sure that you’re both miserable.”
“You know what?” A. P. Hill took another swallow of bourbon and giggled. “Secretly, I used to pretend that Jimmy Stewart was my dad.”
Purdue nodded. “Yes, I can see how a girl with a lousy dad could fantasize about that. Were you thinking of It’s a Wonderful Life?”
“Mostly that one, I guess. I watched all his old films on the movie channel. Every picture he was ever in. Bought the videos of my favorites. Broken Arrow. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That’s when I decided to be a lawyer.”
“Ummm … he wasn’t a lawyer in that one,” said Purdue. “He was just a congressman. He was a lawyer in something else, though, wasn’t he?”
“Anatomy of a Murder. That was sad, though. I hope practicing law isn’t really like that.”
“Maybe. I guess it depends on your practice.”
“Well, I want to do courtroom scenes. Like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, only in court. He inspired me.”
“Did you ever write to him?”
“To the real Mr. Stewart?” A. P. Hill blushed. “No—I can’t believe I’m telling you this—I was afraid that the real James Stewart might ignore me, or that he might say something that would spoil the fantasy. It’s stupid, I know. But I really needed my image of him. Sometimes it’s like I can hear him talking to me.”
“Jimmy Stewart?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen the movies so often that I can just hear him talking, you know, in that voice of his that all the comedians used to imitate. And sometimes when I’m not sure what I should do, I close my eyes and listen to hear what he’ll say.”
Purdue smiled. “So—ask him now! What does he say about you being holed up in your room with a book on Saturday night?”
A. P. Hill took another swallow of her drink, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “He says … ‘Waal, Powell, it’s important to work hard, but you shouldn’t forget to be happy every once in a while along the way.’ ”
“Good advice,” said Purdue, emptying her cup. “Why don’t we go out on the town and see if we can pick up a couple of … lawyers?”
They burst out laughing.
“Hey, it beats spending Saturday night in a dorm,” said Purdue.
A. P. Hill shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” she said.
They trooped off together a bit unsteadily, in the direction of town, but it began to rain, so instead of barhopping, they ended up in a movie. The pact had been made, though, and not very many Saturdays later, they did something a bit more daring, and something happened.
It was a memory that A. P. Hill had been walling out of her consciousness for nearly ten years. She shook off the memory and focused on the road ahead, glad that she had left Williamsburg behind, both past and present.
Geoffrey Chandler, the self-appointed interior designer of the new headquarters of MacPherson & Hill, had dutifully followed Edith on a tour of the upstairs bedrooms of the Dolan mansion, springing ahead of her to open doors and listening to her room descriptions with rapt attention. He was chattier with his new guide than he had been on the downstairs leg of the tour, and he cont
rived to express polite interest in his surroundings, but privately he thought he had wasted enough time on questions of decorating schemes. The upstairs wasn’t particularly important anyway. The clients of MacPherson & Hill would see only the downstairs, and Geoffrey thought it would be presumptuous of him to try to decorate A. P. Hill’s rooms, and hopeless to try to decorate Cousin Bill’s. Still, he smiled and nodded, and scribbled on his notepad as they walked from room to room.
When Edith showed signs of tiring of her role as guide, he said, “I thought that the original owner of the house was still in residence here. I haven’t seen him.”
Edith nodded. “Oh, Mr. Jack is around someplace. It worried me, too, for the first couple of days when he would disappear like that. I was afraid that he’d crawled off somewhere and died of old age. But he always turns up about four-thirty, when I put the teakettle on. I always have a brownie or an apple turnover set aside for him. He’s a sweet old fellow.”
“And quite old, I hear.”
“Past ninety. He’s like an old turtle these days, creeping about the house in slow motion, but he’s still as sharp as ever if you take the time to hear him out. He likes to talk about the old days.”
Geoffrey’s interest quickened. “How wonderful!” he said. “Quite an inspiration to us all. What does he talk about?”
“I don’t know,” said Edith. “Things that happened before I was born, I’ll tell you that. He tends to mumble a lot, so I just nod and smile.”
Geoffrey nodded sympathetically. “Does he ever drag out the old photo albums?” he asked.
“No, I can’t say I’ve been subjected to that.”
“It would be interesting to talk to him about the house,” said Geoffrey. “I’m sure I would find him quite fascinating. And I’d love to see old photographs. It would tell us how the house was originally furnished.”
“Well, you can ask him,” said Edith. “In fact, you’re welcome to have him for a tour guide, if you can stand the pace, which is about one hundred yards an hour. I’m sure he could tell you more about this place than I can.”
The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel Page 13
