Then he was back. “Well, Miz Adams, it looks like you’re not wanted for any felonies in California. And your driving record looks pretty clean. What story you use on the officers out there?”
“I tell ’em the truth, just like I told you.”
He laughed, but his eyes narrowed. “Listen, I’m gone let you and that little dog go this time. But I’m warning you. You got about a hundred and fifty miles between here and Savannah, and if I was you, I’d make sure I did it in no less than three hours. I reckon your momma’s gonna keep them dumplings warm for you.”
“I sure do appreciate that.”
“Miz Adams?” He turned and threw the words back over his shoulder as he headed for his car again. “You tell such a purty story, you ever think of being a writer?”
*
So she was already late when she got to Savannah. Forget lunch at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House. She didn’t have time to stand in line for sixteen vegetables, biscuits, fried chicken, cream gravy, and whatever Mrs. Wilkes had today for dessert. Pecan pie. Banana pudding. Coconut cream cake. Forget it. If she were going to get to Fripp by dark, she’d have to hustle her butt to find out what she could for Emily about Randolph Percy. Then, if she had a minute left, and if she felt like it, maybe she’d see about that damned bus-hijacking story. Pig story. Whatever.
The address she had for Percy’s home was in the historic district of this sleepy old port city, not too far from Mrs. Wilkes. She made her way down broad avenues, past crumbling brick mansions, gentrified townhouses with lacy iron balustrades reminiscent of New Orleans. The two port cities smelled similar, too, a fecund odor of ripe vegetation, hot pavement, salt water. She wheeled slowly around a live oaklined square. This old part of town was full of squares, impediments to the free flow of traffic, but who cared? The same families had been sitting on the same porches sipping the same Madeira, fanning, chatting for centuries. No one was ever in a big hurry. Why, where would you want to go? Local thinking was, if you were in Savannah, you were already there.
It didn’t take long to find the Percy house on West Gordon, looking like it had just climbed out of bed. Wisteria vines hung from loose gray brick. Flapping shutters needed paint. She shaded her eyes and stared up at the still house. Maybe nobody lived there.
Then a screen door banged, and a round-faced man with tortoise-shell glasses stepped out onto his porch at the house next door and blinked at her like a blue-eyed owl.
“You’re staring at the wrong house if restoration’s what you’re looking for.” His voice was high and weedy and a little breathless. “Tourists usually are,” he raced on. “Now this,” he said and pointed behind him, “is the result of two years of broken fingernails. That,” he pointed back at the Percy house, “is a crying shame.”
“Your house?” She meant the one he had just walked out of.
His head bobbed.
“It’s lovely. You do it yourself?”
“Every brick, every board, every curl of rotten paint. Had to burn it off. Smell? My Lord. Makes you shudder to think what must have been in it. Ground up bone meal.”
“Awfully pretty neighborhood. Reminds me of a little of San Francisco.”
His head bounced up and down again. “But this is all much older. When those boys were still living in mining camps, my house was already fifty years old. I’ve seen those houses,” he said, pushing back a blond wave.
“It’s a shame these aren’t all as pretty as yours.” Sam nodded at the Percy house next door.
His mouth pursed. “Nothing you can do about white trash.”
He couldn’t mean the Percy family. They were gentry.
“Renters there now?”
“No. The owner’s still there, but I’ve never seen hide nor hair of anyone in two years. Just stays inside and lets the place fall down around her ears. That’s trashy, don’t you think?” He unfurled the newspaper he’d picked up from his front porch and glanced at the front page, which seemed to galvanize him. “Listen, I’ve got to run. But here.” He reached in his jacket pocket and handed her a card. “That’s my shop. If you want to see some really exquisite things, drop by. I could make you a good price.”
“I’ll try to do that.”
The man started down the sidewalk, and then he hesitated and turned back, slightly pigeon-toed.
“How is San Francisco these days? Have you been there recently? I have lots of friends, but I’ve been afraid to call.” His voice trailed off.
She knew he meant the Castro, the gay neighborhood.
“Quieter,” she said.
“It’s quieter here, too. Quieter everywhere.”
*
“They’s something, ain’t they?” called the old woman working in her yard on the Percys’ other side. She was wearing a tatty straw hat with holes cut in it as if for a horse. Most of the elastic had given way in the top of her orange sundress, and the woman kept hitching at it.
“Who’s something?” Sam moved over to the woman’s yard.
“Them gays. Well, I tell you, I heard you over there talking with him. When I was a girl it was something folks just whispered about. It was a crime against nature is what it was. Now it’s all out in the open. Well, hell, to each his own, I say.” Then the woman pulled a small box out of her pocket and shook something out of it onto the back of her hand. She pinched first one nostril, then the other, snorting.
“Ain’t cocaine like on the TV, that’s what you’re thinking. Hell, I’m too poor for that. Just an old lady’s snuff. Clears my sinuses, you know what I mean?” She held out her hand. “You want some?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, what you doing nosing around here?” She leaned on her hoe and peered with hard blue eyes into Sam’s. “What you looking for?”
“Tourist. Just looking at houses.”
“Come on now. Tell the truth. Don’t shit a shitter, what’s I always say. You don’t fess up, I’m gonna hit you with this hoe.”
Sam jumped back and the old lady cackled. “Ha! Can’t take a joke.” She slapped herself in the vicinity of a thigh. “Want to come in my house and have a little snort? Ain’t had a drink all day. Do me good to have a shot and a chat. Nosy young women don’t come by this way often.”
“I’ll pass on the booze, but I’ll take a glass of iced tea if you have it. Mind if we stay out here and sit on the porch?”
“Suit yourself. You’re not one of them born agains, are you? Preaching at people about the evils of liquor? Trying to get their money on the TV? I hate those sons of bitches.”
“Innocent on all counts.”
“Ha! I didn’t think so. So,” her eyes drilled again, “you an alcoholic?”
Sam hesitated for half a beat. No one had ever asked her so flat out.
“Yep.” She found herself nodding—almost proudly.
“Me, too. But I gave it up.”
Gave up being a drunk or gave up being sober? But the old woman had disappeared into the dim house.
“Gotcha, didn’t I?” She was back in three minutes, carrying two Mason jars, one filled with clear liquid and ice, one with brown. “Made you think there for a second. Well, cheers!” She downed a healthy swig. “Ahhhhh.”
“Thanks. Bottoms up.”
“Now shoot.” The woman settled down in an old metal chair, reaching down the front of the sundress and shifting her bosom. “What you looking for around here?”
A woman after her own heart, getting right down to it. “You know Randolph Percy?”
“Sure. That pretty boy? Known him all his life. ’Bout ten years older than he is, which means I’m old enough to do as I damned well please, and I’ve known him since he was a baby.” She took a sip. “Always been hell with the ladies.”
“Is that so?”
The woman cocked an eye at her. “Now, I reckon you already knew that ’fore you set foot on my steps. What else you want to know?”
“He ever marry any of them?”
The old lady tapped a foref
inger on her nose. “That’s a good question. You mean lately, don’t you?”
“Whenever.”
“’Cause he was married years ago—like everybody else. Married one of them Jewish girls. You know,” she said and took a big gulp, “old Jewish families are something in this town. Buckets of money. And just as snobby as the High Episcolopes. Neither of them’ll speak to you if your family ain’t been in Savannah since Button Gwinnett—he signed the Declaration, case you don’t know.”
“So how did that marriage work out?”
“Didn’t. The Cohens, that’s who he married, a Cohen about ten years older than him, my age, guess she’d given up on her chances of ever marrying one of her own. Anyway the Cohens told him after he and their daughter got back from the elopement, they didn’t care if she was ruined or not, they were taking her back anyhow, and he’d just as well forget the whole thing. They were having it annulled.”
“So he didn’t get to keep his bride.”
“Naw. But I figure he got what he wanted. Not as much as he wanted. But they paid him off. A pretty penny, so I understand.” She took another sip. “That was years ago.” She looked up. “You met him?”
“No.”
“Well, you ought to. You’d see why all the women flock to him like bees to nectar. He’s a silver-tongued devil, that one. Tells women all the things they want to hear. Why he can sidle up to a woman’s plain as a mud fence and within minutes have her laughing and giggling and as pleased with herself as if she was a Savannah debutante. He’s a flatterer, that one. Does magic, too. ’Course, the best magic is making a woman think she’s beautiful, but he does more ordinary kinds, too. Pulls rabbits out of hats, flowers out of ears. He could pull the gold out of your teeth and the diamonds off your fingers, too, I ’magine, if you didn’t keep a close eye. Yeah, he’s something, that Randolph. Yes indeedy, he knows some tricks. Tricks between the sheets, too, I dare say.”
“Now is that fact or opinion?”
“Lord! Go on with you!” The woman flapped an imaginary apron. “You don’t think I’d tell you something like that, do you?” She paused. “Well, another drink and I might.”
“He ever come back here?”
“Now and again. Brings some of his lady friends with him from time to time, too. He still likes ’em pretty, I’ll say that. And he likes ’em old. Always older than him. I swear, sometimes I say to Peter, Peter’s my parrot, I say, ‘Peter, that Randolph Percy must hang out at the Old Miss America contests.’” She cackled again in what must have been a pretty good imitation of her parrot. “You know, if you really want to know about Randolph Percy, you ought to talk to his mother.”
“His mother?”
“I swear. Don’t make nothing like they used to. If I was the police, I’d fire you. Miz Percy’s in that house right there,” she said and pointed, “the one you was staring at. And she’s been peeping out from behind that curtain for the last fifteen minutes, getting her eyes full.”
*
“Are you one of Randy’s friends?” Mrs. Percy’s voice was rusty from disuse. The tiny woman was bent way over behind her screen door, her head tilted like a bird’s.
“Yes’m. Name’s Dana Edwin.” Sam thought she’d best lay on the Southern pretty heavy. “I’m in town just for the day from Atlanta? Randolph asked me to drop by and say hello for him?”
“Well, do come in.”
She followed the old lady into a front parlor where the clock had stopped in about 1929. Once-beautiful satin upholstery lay in tatters, heavy sun-bleached damask curtains were streaked with time.
“That Randy,” said Mrs. Percy in that proud way that mothers do, as if their offsprings’ slight naughtiness were just a foil to their perfection. Tapping her cane, she crept over to a dusty table and offered up a dish filled with mints that looked as if they had been around for the Great Crash. “No candy? Well, that Randy, as I was saying, is the most wonderful son. I’ve always been so proud of him. Don’t you think he’s the most clever thing?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And how do you know him?”
“We met through Felicity Edwards, a mutual friend.”
“He never forgets me. Not for a second. You see that?” She pointed toward a potted orchid resting atop a table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. “He sent me that a few days ago. Went to the trouble even though he’s been feeling poorly. Said there was no harm in being a little early for my birthday. Now isn’t that sweet?”
Interesting. Felicity grew orchids.
“I wish I could say the same for my daughter. Would you like a mint?” Mrs. Percy offered them up again, forgetting that she just had.
“No, thank you. Randolph never mentioned a sister. Now tell me, where did he learn to do all those wonderful magic tricks?”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” The old lady sniffed. “Dorothea was a most unpleasant child. I hate to say it about my own blood, but it’s true. And she grew up to be an unpleasant adult.” She pulled herself up off the loveseat and crept over to a rocking chair as if she needed to change locales to complain about her daughter, which she was obviously going to do come hell or high water.
“That’s a shame.”
“It is. A crying shame. But there’s nothing I can do about it. She always disapproved most thoroughly of me and Randolph. Said we were too close. Silly. Mothers and sons do have a special bond. And she did have her father.”
“Don’t I remember Randolph saying he died young?”
“Yes. He was a coward. Killed himself. Lost all our money and then walked off the pier. Fish bait. Sheer cowardice is what it was. Poor Randolph. It was such an embarrassment to him up at school. He was at Harvard, you know.”
“Hard for you and your daughter, too.”
“Well, it didn’t matter as much, did it? I was a woman, and Dorothea just a girl. But there was Randolph, trying to make something of himself. It was a wonder he could hold his head up.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re proud of him.”
“Always have been. More than I can say for his sister. Dot’s out in California, married herself one of those older men, I mean, he’s dead now, but he was older then—and rich. She plays golf and stays tan. Ruined her complexion. Face looks like a piece of shoe leather. Newport Beach. You know where that is?”
“I do.”
Sam had a friend living in that enclave of rich white Republicans who favored bright-colored slacks, Lilly Pulitzer prints, and dry vodka martinis.
“She divorced us,” Mrs. Percy continued.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Dot divorced me and Randy a long time ago. Said people could divorce their spouses, no reason they couldn’t divorce their relatives. Just cut us dead. Haven’t spoken to her in years. Just as well. She has a spiteful tongue, that girl. Spreading rumors.”
“About you?”
“No. About Randy. You wouldn’t believe the things—” Then she snapped her mouth shut like the clasp on a purse. She stood again, and began to inch her way out of the room.
“What kinds of things?” Sam jumped up. The old lady was escaping and she’d only begun.
But Mrs. Percy shook her head, her lips a thin line of disapproval, and kept creeping. “I’m tired. I’m going to go upstairs and take my nap now. It was nice seeing you, Miss—”
“Edwin.”
“Yes. Well, give Randy my love and tell him I hope he feels better and I couldn’t be happier with the orchids.” And quicker than one would think possible, Mother Percy was gone.
*
Sam stood tapping her toe in front of the house on West Gordon. Well, hell. The afternoon had gotten hot and sticky. She hadn’t accomplished as much as she wanted, and she didn’t have the patience to stand in line at Mrs. Wilkes’s this late. And now Harpo was glaring at her from beneath his bangs.
“Don’t give me any lip, little dog. I left you in the shade of this oak,” she said, untying his leash. “Not enough Spanish moss for you?”
Harpo s
tared at her like she was losing her grip. Well, she was. She got like that when she was near starvation.
“Come on. We can walk to the Crystal from here. Maybe they’ll let you sit in the back lobby, greet your public, and suck up the air-conditioning. And I’ll see if I can raise Julia on the phone.”
Harpo sighed. So far this day hadn’t been his dream of perfection either.
The Crystal Beer Parlor had a good deal in common with Sam’s Atlanta hangout, Manuel’s. Old and funky with ersatz Tiffany lamps and otherwise indifferent interior decoration, it was a watering hole for both the elite and the disaffected. The food was good and cheap and no one gave a damn how long you sat or what you were wearing. Though the hamburgers were legendary, Sam was partial to the oyster sandwich and fries.
This late in the afternoon the place was mostly empty, except for six businessmen in a long red booth who, having said the hell with the afternoon, had shed their suit jackets and were deep into beer and bullshit and peanuts.
“What’ll it be, Miz Adams?” Monroe grinned down at her.
“Damn, you’re good! It’s been six months since I was in here.”
“Twenty-five years practice.”
“I ought to take you back to Atlanta with me.”
“Use me on the paper?”
“Sure could.”
“You want a fried oyster and an iced tea?”
“Now you’re just showing off.”
Monroe laughed.
“Heavy on the ice, please, sir. You seen Julia Townley lately?”
Monroe put his pen back in his snowy-white jacket. “Just missed her. She’s in right before lunch with that Yankee writer’s doing stories about everybody in town. Had a beer, the two of them. You need change for the phone? She’s probably in her studio. You can catch her.”
Fifteen minutes later Julia was sitting across from her wearing a low-cut rose-colored blouse and a cat-in-the-cream-pitcher grin. “How’s tricks, darlin’?”
“Great. Fine. How ’bout you? What’re you working on?”
“Big sculpture. Pink marble. Same color as my new lover’s Johnson. In fact, piece is his Johnson. Wanta see?”
Then Hang All the Liars Page 7
