“We used to go out when we were kids.”
“Uh-huh. And?” Julia’s tongue flicked at the corner of her mouth as if licking strawberry ice cream.
“Now, Julia, I can’t believe you’ve missed Beau Talbot in your travels.”
For it was a well-known fact, well-known because she told anyone who would listen all about it, that Julia Townley had sampled most of the better manflesh that was worth bothering with in the state of Georgia.
Julia laughed her big laugh. “Honey, I’ve missed a few. Though I’ve always regretted that one.”
“Well, he’s right there in Atlanta. Help yourself. Now go on. Finish up about this pig.”
“All right. The pig they’re autopsying isn’t Miss Hazel. It’s one of those of Florence’s that died when the barn burned down. They’re trying to determine if they all died of smoke inhalation and running their heads into the walls or if Mavis had poisoned them.”
“Who cares?”
“Well, the prosecutor does. They’re throwing everything at Mavis but the kitchen sink. I guess they need to decide if she murdered all of Florence’s pigs on purpose or accidentally, in addition to burning down the barn and shooting and hijacking the bus.”
Sam finished up the last bite of her onion rings and the last swallow of her fourth iced tea and sat, grinning. “Hoke’s not going to like this at all.”
“Hoke Toliver?”
“You know Hoke?”
“Ummm-hummm.” Julia grinned that kind of grin.
Sam reached for her wallet. “Hold it. I don’t want to know about it.”
“Don’t you think that crew cut’s cute?” Julia laughed. And then she reached over and swatted Sam with the back of her hand. “Come on, girl. Can’t you take a joke? Now why isn’t Hoke gonna like this story?”
“Because the big boys upstairs are going to say it’s Southern Gothic nut stuff, not hard news.”
“You want to tell me that all those wars and hearings and bullshit on the front page are about anything in the world except pussy and power and greed and little boys worried about the size of their dicks? What the hell do you think news is, girl?”
Sam dropped money on the table. “Well, you know, I never realized you were so smart, Julia. I’ve said the same thing more than once myself.”
“Sheeeeit.”
Nine
Savannah’s Chief Detective Dan Clayton was blond and wiry with the kind of energy more at home in New York City than this dawdling Southern town.
He’d come around the side of his desk and was sitting with Sam, reminding her of Hoke, except instead of the cigarettes, Clayton chewed.
“Pardon,” he said, pointing to his mouth. “Gave up smoking almost a year ago. Wife says I don’t quit the gum soon, she’s trading me in. But I do that, it’ll be the rocking next,” he said, the chair rocking in constant motion, “and after that the talking. She says I run races even in my sleep. But I guess you didn’t come here to talk about my problems. What can I do you for? You writing about the bus kidnapping?”
“No,” Sam said when Clayton finally took a breath. “Julia Townley just told me more about that than I ever need to know.”
“Julia?” Clayton snorted. “She’s something, idn’t she? There’s folks around this town think she ought to be run off, but I say, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. Lot of high and mighty people in Savannah pretending they never screwed or went to the outhouse. You know what I mean?”
“Sure do.” Then she got down to it. “You remember I called you a few days ago about Randolph Percy?”
“Oh, yes.” He leaned back within a centimeter of disaster. “Now I gotcha. Well, I tell you. He’s a smooth old bird. One of the slickest.”
“Then there’ve been other inquiries?”
“Hell, yes. Had calls from departments up in Charleston, in Macon, from down in New Orleans. One not long ago from Decatur, right next door to you.”
“And?”
“It’s always pretty much the same. You can’t arrest a man for having an eye for rich old ladies. And I’ll give it to him. He has the best taste in septuagenarian lookers I’ve ever seen.”
Clayton was up and pacing the room now, his feet pretty much keeping time with his gum.
“The questions always come from family or friends. Never from the women themselves.”
“But they’re able to ask?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re alive?”
He stopped and pulled the gum out of his mouth and stared at it before popping it back.
“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Now am I right, you’ve got another old lady in Atlanta who’s got herself involved with Percy and you’re concerned about her, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, this is how it seems to go. Sometimes the woman dies and leaves Percy her money. Usually quite a bit of it, though I’d say he hasn’t hit the pot at the end of the rainbow yet. And sometimes she doesn’t die, and she and Percy have a fine old time. ’Course, I imagine she picks up all the checks, but that fact never seems to bother her. I mean, we haven’t gotten any calls from them, complaining, if you know what I mean.”
“You think he’s a killer?”
Clayton turned, stared at her, and chewed for a few beats.
“Could be. Very well could be. But there’s never been reason enough for pursuit.”
“Any autopsies?”
“Yep, as a matter of fact. A couple. Natural causes. Complications of old age. It’s not like if he does kill ’em he bashes ’em with a baseball bat. Gets kind of iffy, you know, when you’re dealing with people that age. It’s not the same as investigating a thirty-five-year-old who’s popped off and left him a bundle. Then we’d have something to look at.”
“You know the Cohens?”
“You mean the Cohen he married?”
She nodded.
“They’re not going to talk with you. This was all before my time, but I know the story. Town’s small enough that nothing’s ever secret, and nothing’s ever forgotten. I could tell you dirt from before the War Between the States if you wanted to hear it.”
“Not right now.”
Clayton grinned and shifted his gum.
“Didn’t think so. But anyway, the Cohens paid Percy off and shipped their daughter up to an aunt in New York where she got married to Ruben Glass in less than a year. Brought him back down here with her, and they’re enjoying their grandchildren in a house over to East Harris. But they all sat shiva—you know what I mean—over the marriage to Percy. Far as they’re concerned, it never happened.”
“So there’s nobody else I oughta talk to?”
“Nobody who’s gonna do you any good. What I do think is I wouldn’t trust Randolph Percy anymore’n I’d put faith in one of those rabbits he pulls out of his hat. A snake-oil salesman if one ever drew breath. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if from time to time he doesn’t help a lady along to her just reward. So if I was you, I’d get my friend the hell away from him fast as I could. Though…”
He stopped for a minute and stared at the wall like he saw something.
There was nothing there but a spidery crack.
“Though what?”
“Aw, I don’t know.” Clayton shoved his hands in his back pockets. “It’s, hell, I guess it’s a sexist thing to say anyhow.”
“Go on. I’ll hit you with my purse if it’s too bad.”
“That’s what my wife always says. And she does. Except it’s a briefcase. She’s with the D.A.’s office, and that sucker is heavy.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sam shifted in her seat, enjoying him but anxious to get on with it. She’d like to make Fripp before dark.
“Well, hell, maybe it’s not sexist. More likely it’s just stupid. But I been thinking about Percy over the past couple of years, and sort of wondered…when I get old…I mean…I was a lady in my seventies and along came this snappy old dude wanted to court me and, from w
hat I hear, make love to me, and I thought he was the greatest thing since peanut butter, I mean, if all that was true, would I really want to know he’s in it just for my money?”
“What if he were in it for your life?”
Clayton shrugged. “I don’t know. You think you get to a point where that’s not so important either? Where you’d rather trade off a few months or a year or so of hot stuff for day after day of the soaps, watching paint dry?”
“Guess you don’t know that till you’re there.” What a strange man. “Peculiar question for a peace officer to ask.”
“Reckon the more weird you see, the more you ponder. You ought to know that.”
“I do.”
“So what do you think about what I said?”
“About whether it’s okay or not for Randolph Percy to do in old women ’cause he gives them a few last jollies?”
“That’s a raw way of putting it. No. Whether or not you’d want to go on living with nothing going on?”
“Like I said, depends how you define nothing.”
Clayton stared down at her hands for a minute.
“You’re not married, are you?”
Uh-oh.
“Nope. Used to be. Gave it up.”
She thought about Mrs. Percy’s neighbor in the orange sundress who’d said the same thing about drinking.
“You going to ask next why a good-looking woman like me isn’t married?”
Clayton had a nice slow grin.
“Guess you’ve had this conversation before.”
“Once or twice.”
“So?”
“Aw, come on, Dan. You hitting on me or you about to try to fix me up?”
“Neither.” He laughed. “Though being a healthy red-blooded American male, the former has occurred to me. But since I married Pat, I’ve managed to keep it zipped up. I was a rotten son of a bitch before I met her, didn’t know what the hell I wanted. Then she came along and I knew. I guess that’s why when I meet a woman like you who seems to be hitting on all fours, I wonder why she’s alone.”
Weird. Positively strange. Men never talked like this.
He caught her look. “Forget it.” He stood and walked back behind his desk, opened and closed a drawer. “I’m too nosy and I think too much. I’m sorry. It’s a terrible habit.”
They sat and stared at each other across his desk. Funny. She’d met him fifteen, twenty minutes ago but it felt like forever. He had that thing about him, that some people do, you knew he wasn’t going to lie to you or spill your secrets. Or maybe he was. Maybe that’s what made him a good cop—you trusted him whether or not you ought to.
“Sean O’Reilly, chief of detectives, SFPD,” she heard herself saying. “You’d have liked him. Class-A police officer.”
Clayton folded a fresh piece of gum.
“Originally from New York. He died last October.” Something tickled uncomfortably in the back of her brain. What was today? What was the date?
“Duty?”
She shook her head. “DWI. Hit and run.”
“That’s tough. I’m sorry.” He was rocking back and forth again. “So that’s why you came to Atlanta?”
“Mostly.”
“You do a good job, Adams.”
She looked up.
“I read your stuff. Nice job on that Dodd case. And I’ve seen clips on that serial case in California—the one that won you the prizes, right?”
“You’re awfully flattering. I don’t know what to say.”
“Try thank you.” He grinned. “Listen, things between your side and mine are sometimes rough. It’s nice to meet a pro.” He was stretching now, patting his flat belly like a fat man. “Anything I can do, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call.”
“I appreciate it.”
“And forget all that philosophizing about Randolph Percy. Sucker’s guilty of a parking ticket, we’ll catch his ass. Nail it to the wall.”
That was more like it. More like cop talk she was used to.
She glanced down at Dan Clayton’s desk calendar. There it was, the date she was afraid of. October fifteenth. A year ago today he died.
More like Sean.
Ten
Late all day, she was driving northward through the gathering dark, the ocean’s soft breath blowing at her across the marshes. Harpo yawned in her lap, restless, ready to get where they were going.
“Long day, boy.”
He licked her hand.
“Hold on. Not much farther.”
She scratched his ears and he wriggled, rolled over belly up. She wondered if he remembered Sean—who’d brought him to her door, a puppy with a big red bow around his neck, a six-week-old fluff ball. Harpo was about a year old when Sean died—a year ago this very day her flame-haired lover bounced up into the air like he was showing off.
Her tears blurred headlights in the distance.
It was no mistake she didn’t know what the date was. Since the first of the month she’d let the days elide. Busy, busy. Working hard. How she got through the last year. How she’d kept going.
She slipped a tape into the deck. Patsy Cline wailed—no, thank you, ma’am—she pushed eject, too close to the bone.
She tried the radio.
“…bringing you jazz sounds through the night.” The announcer’s voice was blackstrap molasses, thick and dark and smooth. “Here’s an old favorite—at least of mine.” The man sort of hissed his Ss. “Charlie Mingus. One, two, three, four, five.”
Mingus’s slow-talking bass rumbled through the car as they rolled now along the main street of little old Beaufort, past big white wooden houses topped by widows’ walks, turned eastward, crossed bridges and islands, or so the signs read, but who could tell? The definition between land and water blurred as the continent mushed and melded into the ocean, so different from the California coast where the mountains crashed toward the Pacific like a teenaged boy going for it, balls out, yahoooooing through blue air. Here the meeting was a kiss, a murmur.
On the radio a horn moaned. Seemed just the right mood for Frogmore, the tiny community of low-country blacks she was passing through. Now you see it, now you don’t. A couple of stores, fried seafood spots, tar paper shacks squatting on land a developer was drooling to get his hands on to throw together some condos. The air was heavy with marsh, sea grass, and salt.
A couple more bridges. A gatehouse. Fripp. The end of the road. Her headlights flashed on George’s wide-porched house. She doused them and sat in the still and the dark, not ready yet to go inside and be alone.
She probably would have sat there all night, pretending she wasn’t deep in the ditch, grieving Sean, if it hadn’t been for the phone.
*
She caught it on the fifth ring.
“Sam Adams.”
“Jane Wildwood.”
Where’d she heard that name?
“Little Five Points Pub. Tight Squeeze.”
“You’re the redheaded poet.”
And stripper. Yes, indeedy. Hot damn.
“Heard you’re looking for me.”
“Wouldn’t mind having a chat.”
A plume of smoke shooshed out on the other end of the line.
“So talk.”
“Saw you the other day at Tight Squeeze.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sam would have sworn she could hear gum shift in the girl’s mouth. Smoking and chewing at the same time. Dan Clayton would love her.
“Saw you, too. There and at the poetry reading. You following me?”
“Just coincidence.”
“So why are you following me?”
“Really, I’m not.”
“I’m not selling drugs, that’s what you think. Used to hang with some guys who did, but not me.”
“It’s not drugs.”
“Then what? You doing a story on how girl poets support themselves getting naked in public?”
“About girls getting naked in public, yes. Not necessarily poets.”
�
��Which girls?”
“Young ones.”
“Younger’n me?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Oh, yeah. A lot younger.”
The sound of the match striking was so close that Sam could almost smell the sulphur. Then there was a long pause.
“I don’t know many girls who work there. I just do my gig and go home. Write my poetry.” That last was half ironic, half a bright flag of challenge. “I do write my own stuff, you know. I’ve had a couple things published.”
“I liked what I heard.”
“Okay.” Jane’s voice shifted gears, getting down to business now. “What’s in this for me?”
“Depends on what you know.”
“I know what you want to know.”
How hard to push her? What to offer? This was new territory. A poetical ecdysiast opened a brand-new file. She told Jane Wildwood as much.
“Comes from ecdysis, casting off an outer shell.”
“That’s nice.”
“That’s what poets do for a living. Know about words.” She laughed. “Words like, ‘Hey, Red, you wanna fuck?’”
“Now we’re getting warmer.”
“I thought so.” The gum popped. Crack, crack, crack, crack. “So, Miz Adams. You just wanna jerk me around all night—I mean, this is costing me long distance—or you wanna get on with it?”
“Don’t worry about the phone. And I’ll make our conversation well worth your while. Tell me what’s going down.”
“That’s what we’re dicking around about, isn’t it? What my information’s worth?”
“So far I haven’t heard jack.”
“Jesus! Why don’t you just ask me if I know anything about young society twats putting it on the line and I’ll tell you yes.”
Bingo. Jackpot.
“Okay, what do you want?”
“A job.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The young Ms. Wildwood warmed to her subject now, shed her cool and picked up speed. “You think I want to do what I’m doing the rest of my life? I’ve got a degree from Florida State, journalism major, creative-writing minor. I wanna be Brenda Starr.”
Then Hang All the Liars Page 9
