Then Hang All the Liars

by Sarah Shankman

  “Yes, they let me out every once in a while.”

  “How are George’s lessons coming?” Miriam asked.

  “She means, has the Lighthouse succeeded in teaching me how to avoid making an ass of myself?”

  “Well,” teased Emily, “we do the best we can with the training. I make no promises about your personal behavior.”

  “Did you enjoy the play?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, indeed,” said Emily. “Of course, the Players is very special to us. Felicity does all of their voice coaching.”

  “I give them a little help from time to time.” Felicity smiled right on cue.

  “Don’t be so modest,” her sister insisted. “You’ve been a wonderful help to Margaret and the theater.”

  “Well, it’s fun. I never had any children,” she explained to Sam, “but I’ve always loved working with young people.”

  “Do you give private lessons, too?”

  “Occasionally. It’s hard, you know, when you get older, to do very much, but along comes a special case, young and talented, and you can’t refuse. Oh, look,” she said and pointed at someone behind Samantha, “there’s one of my private students now.” Sam turned and followed her finger. Once again it was the lovely Laura. She was standing with her toes out now, her back against a pillar. Her tilted green eyes were locked into those of the handsome man leaning toward her.

  “It’s Laura Landry,” Felicity said. “Margaret’s daughter. Do you recognize her? She’s one of the three witches in the play.”

  Sam laughed. A beautiful young witch was just the ticket for that silver-haired, golden-tongued devil, Beau Talbot.

  *

  My dearest Samantha, the letter had begun. Even at nineteen, Sam had been no dummy. She’d known that those three little words meant her love affair with Beau, the drop-dead handsomest intern who’d ever come down the pike, was in deep shit, for from the day she’d met him, cursing at his mother’s lawn mower, he’d never called her anything but Sammy.

  Her instincts were right. He went on to explain, though it was real hard to explain exactly how this had come about, his undying love for her having expired in just a matter of weeks after his having gone back to New York. Forget about their plans for her to transfer from Emory to NYU. Forget about the promise ring he’d given her. There was this girl he’d met a long time ago in Boston. He didn’t know how to explain it, it was real hard to explain, but they were getting married. Tomorrow.

  She’d gone straight upstairs and locked her door.

  Peaches, George’s housekeeper, and the only mother she’d known since she was twelve and her parents died in a plane crash near Paris, stood outside and threatened to break the door down.

  After three days, Sam came out and asked Horace, Peaches’s husband and the houseman and chauffeur, if he could take her bags down to the Lincoln. She’d made her reservations for San Francisco, and she imagined George could pull the strings to get her into Stanford if he tried.

  She was out of here.

  Love was short.

  Life was long.

  She was gone.

  George said he wished she wouldn’t, but he guessed she knew what she was doing.

  He was wrong.

  She didn’t know diddle—except about running and hiding.

  On the spur of the moment, she hid in a marriage to a bearded draft resister. After that, she pulled the covers over her head and sipped mint juleps, listening to Janis Joplin on the stereo for quite a few years. Then she got sober, got awfully good as an investigative reporter, got Sean, the chief of detectives of the SFPD, as her lover. Lost Sean a year ago to a drunk driver. Came home to George and Peaches and Horace and the grand old house on Fairview Road. Ran into Beau. And kept running into him, especially after he left his wife and moved back in across the street with his mother. He kept horning in on her stories, popping up everywhere. She told him to get lost.

  “We’ll set this town on its ear, Sammy. What a team we could be! Spectacular! Give us a chance.”

  “We’re not Tracy and Hepburn here. We’re not even Bruce What’s-his-name and the blonde.”

  “Cybill Shepherd.”

  “She gives me gas. He needs a shave.”

  But maybe they were. Maybe it was kismet.

  So she opened the door to her heart about half a millimeter. And her knees considerably wider. The very next evening she ran into Beau with a twenty-year-old blonde at a Braves game.

  “Beau,” she said and smiled and nodded at the girl.

  “No!” Beau cried. “Sammy, I’m not worth your going back on the booze.” She’d grabbed a beer from a passing hawker.

  “I know.” She smiled again and dropped it. “Excuse me,” she said to the blonde. Some of the beer had splattered onto her off the top of Beau’s head. “I didn’t mean to hit you. By the way, this man is: a) old enough to be your father, b) a son of a bitch, and c) a heartbreaker. Git while you can, kid.”

  But she knew the girl wouldn’t. Even full-grown women had to have the Mack truck back up and run over them several times before they got the message.

  But this time Sam got it loud and clear. She had to deal with the snake professionally; after all, he was the state’s chief medical examiner, and his mother was more or less engaged to her uncle. But he’d moved out of the neighborhood. She didn’t want to know where. Probably a house with a round bed. Mirrors on the ceiling. A Jacuzzi, perhaps, for soothing young dancers’ tired muscles. Laura, the young witch, did look like she danced.

  *

  “Sam?”

  George was jiggling her elbow, nudging her back to the present and the Players’ party.

  “I’m sorry. Yes?”

  “I was just asking you if you’d like to come over and have tea with us some afternoon,” Felicity said.

  “Why, yes. I’d love to.”

  Indeed, she would like to see more of the fabled Edwards sisters as well as the inside of their spectacular house. Yes, tea with the ladies would be grand.

  Then she looked back at Laura and Beau. What did this young beauty know about Tight Squeeze?

  But they were gone. Walking through that spot which they’d left, still warm, was Miranda, the blonde, Laura’s companion from the side of the potted palm.

  Sam grabbed Felicity’s arm and pointed.

  “Who’s that? There. Is she one of your students, too?”

  “Where? Who do you mean?” Felicity leaned, trying to be helpful, but then shook her head.

  Damn.

  “Do you mean the pretty blonde in pink?” asked Miriam.

  Sam nodded.

  “Miranda Burkett, P.C. Burkett’s daughter. The deb of the year.”

  Sam smiled. Well. Her daddy’s face certainly appeared on the front page of the Constitution frequently enough. So far, Charlie was right on target.

  Three

  “Why do you want to be running off to Fripp, for God’s sakes, when you could be going to the meeting in San Francisco with me?” Hoke Toliver’s hound-dog countenance was barely visible behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. He waved at a chair. “Sit down and talk.”

  “You know I never sit in here. Gives you the jump.”

  “Nice talk. I should put you on report.”

  “Shut up, Hoke.”

  He grinned, stood, hitched his pants, and lit another cigarette from a burning butt.

  “So why won’t you come with me?”

  In the past year, this had become a practiced joke. Sam sighed, not giving it a lot. “One, I don’t date men who wear crew cuts.”

  “I’ll grow my hair.”

  “Not by next Saturday.”

  “I’ll start. For you, I’ll look like a hedgehog.”

  “Two, I don’t see men in the program.”

  “You’re in AA. What do you have against alcoholics all of a sudden?”

  “It’s a rule. Like not sleeping around in the office, which is reason number three.”

  “Not in the office. In San Francisco
. In the Stanford Court.” Then Hoke ran an eye around his pigsty, resting it finally on an old purple velvet sofa that a homeless copy boy had dragged in for a bed ten years previously. “Though that’s not a half-bad idea.”

  “Four, I lived in San Francisco twelve years. I don’t need to go back. Five, Lois would shoot you.”

  “Lois? Lois worships the ground I walk on. She wouldn’t hurt the least hair on my head.”

  “What about what she does to your cute assistants?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I need to have a talk with Lois.”

  “You do not, you Commie-pinko bra-burning vegetarian lesbian Pravda-stringer.”

  “I am not a bra burner.”

  Hoke leaned forward on his elbows with a loosey-goosey smile, making her aware that her green silk blouse was just a little too snug.

  “No, you aren’t, are you?”

  She turned toward the door. “I’m not going to San Francisco, Hoke. And I’m not going to go do that stupid bus hijacking in Savannah, either. I came in here bright and early on this Monday morning to tell you I’m going to hole up for a few days at Fripp. At the beach. And that’s it.”

  “You think because you won all those prizes and the Big Boy hired you at an annual fee bigger than a high-class hooker’s—and with more perks—you can just go off and do what you want?”

  She smiled. “That’s the way my contract reads, boss.”

  “There’s a story in Savannah.”

  “I don’t do buses.”

  “Jesus, do I deserve this?” Hoke held his head in his hands. Sam could see his shiny skull through the short turf of his crew cut.

  “It’s only three or four days. Long enough to get out there, write the foreword to my friend Annie’s book, and get back.”

  “Why can’t you stay here and do it?”

  “I’m gone, Hoke. In the morning.”

  “I want you to do the bus.”

  From the hall, she called, “Not up my alley.”

  “You are driving me nuts!” His voice trailed along behind her like a dust bunny. Then he stuck his head out of his office. Her finger was on the elevator button. “You could do it on your way.”

  “Not a snowball’s chance. Besides, I’m on the trail of something new. You’re gonna love it.” She winked. “Very hot.”

  The elevator doors closed on his strangled, “What?”

  *

  She could do a lot of her snooping from home with her modem, but to access the paper’s behemoth computer, which interfaced with systems all across the country, Sam needed to come into the office. She sat now before the terminal in her office, as bare bones plain as if her name weren’t on the door.

  Now to see about Miranda, P.C. Burkett’s blue-eyed daughter. She punched in one code after another. The screen blinked greenly at her.

  She’d start with Big Daddy. Paul Coles Burkett, fifty. Listed in Forbes top one hundred, free-wheeling, high-born from generations of rural gentry, came to the big city, bought land and started building shopping centers. Now he was developing suburban housing tracts all across the country, then furnishing them with shopping malls and executive parks. He’d almost single-handedly developed Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta and one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. Needless to say, his credit rating was five stars. Sam kept checking. Burkett had five cars registered in his name: Rolls, Mercedes, Maserati, an antique Bugatti, and a Porsche. He was a member of the Piedmont Driving Club, the Cherokee Club, the Claridge, and every other social, fraternal, and professional organization that befit his stature as a major pillar of the community, the state, and the nation. She checked another file. Early in life he had listed his religious affiliation as Southern Baptist, but some years ago had leapfrogged to join the Episcopalians. He had contributed the limit in the past state and presidential elections, and, of course, she already knew his name was frequently bandied about as a possible candidate for public office.

  Wife, Nicole Chenonceaux. As in the chateau. Born in Paris in 1943. Holder of a valid Georgia driver’s license. The remainder of her statistics—property, credit, etc.—tied in with her husband’s. Nicole Burkett had never filed her own taxes and was listed as her husband’s dependent. Sam tried a few more files. Nothing more seemed to be available. Interesting. Money certainly could buy privacy.

  Children. Miranda, nineteen. Ah-ha. Sam punched in another code. No arrests. Well, did she really expect the mega-developer’s daughter to have a sheet? The holder of several gold and one platinum credit card in her own name. Charge accounts at all the right stores in Atlanta and several in New York. She’d spent a couple of years at boarding school in Switzerland. That was mighty tall cotton even for Georgia society. Presently a freshman at Agnes Scott. So, they’d brought the young lady back home. And that was all the dope she could scare up on Miranda.

  One son, Paul, Jr., fifteen. A sophomore at Westminster. A soccer star.

  Burkett’s ancestral home, Belle Meade, white columned, no doubt, was down south near Waycross. Here in town, the Burketts lived on Habersham Road, out by the governor’s mansion with the rest of the old money. A co-op on Park Avenue. A house in Paris.

  P.C.’s various business holdings went on for years. Some private, some corporate. Lots of land. Some Texas oil holdings. Some Manhattan properties. A small island in the Caribbean.

  Nothing that she hadn’t expected. Except Miranda’s mother’s being French, that was sort of interesting. Southern gentlemen, especially very rich and powerful ones, usually treated marriage as a merger, plumping up the bloodlines and the landholdings close to home. But it looked like P.C. was his own man in affairs of the heart.

  Why was there nothing in the system about Nicole, though? Curious. Sam tried Nicole’s name again several ways. Nothing. No record of schooling. No previous marriages. Zipola. She’d have to dig up the code book for Paris records.

  But back to the main event. Miranda. None of this electronic snooping had given her a clue to the question: How did the pretty little daughter of one of the nation’s most rich and powerful men get her name tied in with a Tenth Street strip club? Or had she? So far Sam still only had Laura Landry’s word for it—and that spoken in a fit of pique. So far, she had nothing.

  “Miz Adams?”

  The voice crept in through the just-cracked door. Sam jumped.

  It was Shirley Cahill, Squirrely Shirley, the city room office manager.

  “You’ve been on the hookup for twenty-two minutes.”

  “Yes?” Sam spoke through her teeth.

  “Well, you know we have to watch our pennies these days. So did you set your timer when you punched on?”

  The Squirrel wasn’t giving up. Sam knew she was playing to an audience in the room behind her. The fat-cheeked woman had been put up to this by other editors, Sam’s independence having not exactly bought her a lot of friends on staff.

  “I’m not boiling an egg in here, Shirl.”

  “I know, but you’re supposed to set your timer. Didn’t you read the memo? You only get fifteen minutes at a time on the big system, unless you’ve got written permission.” There was giggling from the city room.

  “I’m a grownup, Shirl. I don’t bring notes from home.”

  “But—”

  “But squat.” Sam was advancing now, backing Shirl out the door. “Get out of my way or I’ll break your glasses.”

  Shirley jumped.

  Sam smiled her sweetest as she trooped past her. The small knot of giggling reporters scattered, stepping on one another’s toes.

  Then Sam stopped and patted Shirley’s bony shoulder. The woman recoiled. “Hell, I was only kidding,” Sam said. “I wouldn’t touch your glasses for a million dollars. Never forgive myself if something happened to those rhinestones.”

  Shirley raised her hand to the frames she’d been ever so careful with since high school.

  Sam marched through the city room. She’d come back later when fewer of the tro
ops were around and Shirl was home clipping laundry detergent coupons. Then she’d see what she could find about the ownership of Tight Squeeze. But right now she was itching to get out there and do some live-and-in-color field patrol.

  As she wheeled her silvery blue BMW out of the parking lot, she peeled a little rubber for her favorite attendant, Buster. He waved his hat like a checkered flag behind her and she was off. At the first light she checked her watch. Still an hour before her lunch date with George and Emily Edwards, who had invited them both. Plenty of time for a look-see at Tight Squeeze. If it wasn’t closed. Did women rip off their clothes for money in front of strangers before lunch?

  She threaded her way through heavy downtown traffic, heading toward the faster artery of Piedmont. All around her was the mushrooming campus of Georgia State, blond brick buildings wedged among the gold-domed state capitol building, a maze of marble-faced state office buildings, and the freeway. She caught the light at Auburn and glanced eastward down the main drag of the old black business neighborhood. Down a couple of blocks were the Ebenezer Baptist and the Players theater. She thought about last night, the party, Margaret Landry, her golden daughter, Laura.

  Then the light changed and she made her left and zipped along busy Piedmont, heading north past the sprawling civic center to the midtown area where gays were gentrifying old three-story apartment buildings, painting the whole neighborhood pink and gray and aqua.

  She found a parking place on Crescent Drive, walked the one block back to Tenth and Peachtree.

  This little four-block commercial strip seemed to undergo a sea change every five minutes, and the looming presence of the brand-spanking-new IBM tower up the street was going to make even more of a difference, the few remaining small shops soon to be bulldozed for smart shopping plazas, designer coffee boutiques. But in the meantime, there it was, a marquee with three bulbs blown flashing in the clear October sunlight. TIGHT SQUEEZE. George had said sometime he’d tell her the history behind that name, but as she pushed open the door padded in black leatherette and the rank aroma of sour beer and stale smoke hit her, Sam’s concern was the here and now.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, a single spot focused on a young redhead whose pelvis, encased in black lace panties about the size of a glove, listlessly rotated to Satchmo’s “Mack the Knife.” Her magnificent breasts would be low hangers in a few years; for now, they’d knock your eyes out. But the girl wasn’t enthusiastic about her current line of work. Shoulders tucked in, head down, the scarlet mane of hair was a curtain between her and the three men who were cheerleading. Except for them, the single long room was deserted.