Then Hang All the Liars

by Sarah Shankman

  “Don’t be silly. Can I give you the tour? Get you a cup of coffee?”

  “I’ll take the coffee, thanks.”

  “Here, then.” Emily pointed at a small table piled with books, flanked by two comfortable chairs. “Why don’t you settle yourself, and I’ll go scare up the coffee. Just move those things over to the bookshelf. I must do something about this office.”

  Sam waved her and her apology away and picked up the books.

  A volume on seeing-eye dogs.

  Another on spaniels.

  A report from a conference in Lucerne on the disabled.

  The Awakening by Kate Chopin. A wonderful novel about a woman too advanced for her own good. Emily would like it. At the bottom of the pile was The Great Gatsby.

  Sam sat down with the book and leafed through the pages of one of her old favorites.

  The elusive Jay Gatsby and his long-lost Daisy with her melodious Southern voice. As Fitzgerald said, a voice full of money.

  That was who Felicity had always reminded her of, Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan. Daisy of the astonishing voice. Lovely, careless, selfish Daisy who ran down her husband’s lover in Gatsby’s roadster, then let Gatsby take the blame.

  Sam started.

  Why not?

  For suddenly it occurred to her that she might be barking up the wrong Edwards sister.

  What if Felicity’s madness were a charade?

  What if Felicity had planted the incidents that pointed away from her?

  What if Felicity killed Randolph Percy?

  But why?

  Because he was the long-ago deserting father of her child?

  Because he was blackmailing her?

  Over what?

  That secret, the baby. Or some other.

  Or perhaps there was something between Emily and Randolph. Felicity’s jealousy was the motive. Maybe that was it.

  Just then Emily bustled back into the room with two steaming mugs. “You do take it light, don’t you, dear?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now, to what do I owe this pleasure? Something about Mr. Percy?”

  Sam sipped the coffee.

  Then her eyes met Emily’s.

  “I’m afraid I’m here to ask you some hard questions.”

  “Well, yes.” Emily sighed. “I knew you would eventually.” She planted the mug firmly on the table and crossed her hands in her lap, assuming the demeanor of someone finally roped into the dentist’s chair. “Go ahead. Do your duty.”

  This was going to be easier than Sam had thought.

  Maybe.

  “I can’t shake the feeling that the imaginary baby Felicity talks about is important here.”

  “To Percy?”

  “To Percy. To Felicity. It figures somewhere.”

  Emily sighed.

  “Does it, Emily?”

  “I’m afraid it might. Sort of indirectly.”

  “So there was a baby.”

  “Yes.” She fiddled with the handle of her mug. “There was. I knew you’d realize that sooner or later. Yes. Felicity did have a baby.” Then she leaned back and Sam watched as her body relaxed. There. Fifty-odd years. She’d finally said the words.

  “When?”

  “In 1937, in New York. She was twenty-two. It was a disaster. She could have gone far.” Emily shook her head. “I hate waste.”

  “Why did that stop her? I know it was a different time, but I wouldn’t think a child would necessarily end her career.”

  “Because that was when her manic-depressive cycles began in earnest.”

  “You mean the shock of the baby’s death brought them on?”

  Emily’s head snapped.

  Uh-oh. She’d gone too far too fast. Nobody had said anything about the baby dying. At least nobody here today. That had been Felicity who’d said Emily had killed the child. Not exactly what one wanted to bring up at this juncture.

  “Noooo.” Emily drew the word out, all the while playing with the heavy gold chain she wore around her neck and the engraved locket-watch suspended from it. “No,” she repeated, “the pregnancy triggered the cycles. The change in hormones. You know, women experience all kinds of aberrations in their bodies during and after pregnancy. Curly hair goes straight. Allergies they never had before. Multiple sclerosis. Pregnancy can be very dangerous. And in Felicity’s case, it was.” Then she smiled slightly as if she knew she wasn’t going to get away so easily. “So it wasn’t the fact that she thought the baby died that brought on the manic-depression. Though that certainly didn’t help.”

  “What do you mean thought?”

  Emily’s eyes suddenly went big. Here it came.

  “The baby didn’t die. I mean, I told her that the baby didn’t make it. But she did.”

  “A girl.”

  “A beautiful little girl.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Nothing catastrophic. Her grandparents raised her.”

  “But wouldn’t—”

  “No, no.” Emily shook her head. “On her father’s side. The baby grew up with that family.”

  “And Felicity’s daughter’s alive now?”

  Sam had done the calculation earlier. She’d be in her early fifties.

  “No. I don’t know.” Emily fidgeted with the locket, snapped it open and shut. “It was better that Felicity thought she was dead, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her the rest of her life. And I didn’t want to know either. Her grandparents were good people. I helped them with her financially. Other than that, I don’t know anything. I don’t know what happened to her.” Her voice was so low at the end that Sam could barely hear her.

  “Emily,” she said, “as respectfully as I know how, I have to tell you that I think you’re lying. Or at least sidestepping.”

  Emily turned her head, staring at the walls as if she’d never seen them before, at diplomas and awards inscribed with her name. At photographs of herself, young and old, in whites, in khaki, and in street clothes, smiling in a variety of groupings. Emily in her early fifties standing next to a grinning John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? And I’m not very good at it.”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ve never been good at deception.” Then she turned back and looked Sam straight in the eye. “Except those years in the camp in the Philippines.” She pointed a forefinger. “I was very good then.”

  “I bet you were.”

  “Please don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not. Nothing could be further from my intent, Emily. I think you’re a courageous woman. And whatever this is that you’ve hidden for so long, I know it’s been very hard for you.”

  “It has. But there’s no excuse for it, for my behavior, for the lies.” She stood now, straightening her backbone, and strolled back and forth in a short path between her desk and the table. “They were wrong, and they made it harder for everyone. Especially for Margaret.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Margaret Landry.” Emily’s eyes drilled into Sam’s then, her head high, her jaw strong. “My niece. Felicity’s daughter.”

  *

  “His name was Johnny Jackson. Hoppin’ John was his nickname—the name he used on stage.”

  Emily was telling it all now. She couldn’t be stopped once she’d started. Sam had already gotten up once and found the place down the hall, poured them each another cup of coffee. She didn’t want Emily to move. Just keep talking.

  “He was an actor?”

  “A musician. Jazz musician. He played the saxophone, I believe. No, the clarinet. That’s right.” And then her eyes went away somewhere. “We used to go and listen to them in a club on West Fifty-second Street. Late at night, till the wee hours. A small room filled with smoke, women in satin dresses, that music.” She smiled.

  “It was really something, huh?”

  “Yes, it was. Seems like someone else’s life now.”

  “And this Hoppin’ John?”

  �
��He was a handsome man. Well intentioned, I suppose. No, I know he was.” Emily smiled. “He was crazy about Felicity.

  “God, I wish you could have seen her in those days. She was so beautiful, she’d take your breath away. Johnny used to call her his Georgia peach. And that was right on target. Such a little bit of a thing, golden. Apricot-colored, really. Her hair that shade of ripe fruit, cut in a bob. And so fragile. Georgia peach was right. You were afraid to touch her for fear she’d blemish. Bruise.” She paused for a moment. “They were the most incongruous couple.”

  “He was black.”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, he was. From New York. Different from any colored people we’d ever known. Talked fancy. Lord, I will never forget that man’s clothes. He wore the most beautiful clothes.”

  Sam shut her eyes for a moment and watched Gatsby toss a great tumbled rainbow of his lovely shirts on a bed for Daisy. Choosing them, of all the things he was, of all the things he owned, to prove his worth to her.

  “Yet, in other ways, they were so similar. They both had a kind of frenetic energy. Moved so quickly that sometimes all you saw was what they left behind, a sort of phosphorescent glimmer.” She paused. “Am I making any sense?”

  “Perfect sense. Go on.”

  “Well, there’s not really much to tell. They met in the Little Club one night when Felicity stopped in after a performance, and fell head over heels in love. Felicity got pregnant.”

  “And Johnny?”

  “He traveled. He was on the road. But, yes, he wanted to do the right thing by her. He tried to get her to marry him. But it was so ill fated. Felicity with her, our background. I’m afraid love doesn’t conquer all. Though maybe it would have, but—” Her voice broke.

  “What happened?”

  “Johnny was on a tour through the Midwest. He called Felicity every night, begging her to join him, to marry him. She didn’t know what to do. She was terrified. I’d come up and was staying with her. The phone would ring in the middle of the night. She kept saying she had to think about it. She was confused. And suddenly, there was silence. He never called again.”

  “Because she wouldn’t say yes?”

  “No, he literally disappeared. It took months for us to find out anything. You can imagine, Felicity was mad with worry. She thought he’d deserted her. And we couldn’t get any word. The band kept traveling. Finally the story came, such as it was. He went out for a beer one night in St. Louis and never came back.”

  Was he crossing a rain-slick street? Did a speeding car bounce him up in the air and straight into heaven?

  “They never found out what happened?”

  “Never a trace. Nothing.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he was killed. Johnny didn’t have good sense when it came to lots of things. To Felicity, in particular. He carried a picture of her and loved to show it to people.”

  “So you think he bragged to the wrong crowd that this blonde was going to have his child?”

  “Something like that. One can only surmise.”

  “And then?”

  “When she heard the news, Felicity went into labor. She was about seven months along. It was easy to convince her the baby hadn’t made it.” Emily pushed at the tip of her aristocratic nose with a finger. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time. The only thing. Felicity was out of her mind. She needed to come home, to be looked after. And the baby—well, it was impossible.”

  “So you took the infant to her grandparents?”

  “Ollie and James Jackson. They had met Felicity and were crazy about her, though they, too, were troubled by the relationship—but in any case, they were delighted to have Margaret. She was all they had left of their only son, Johnny. They named her after his favorite grandmother.”

  “And then?”

  “She grew up. She prospered. The Jacksons still had two almost-grown daughters at home, so she was lavished with love. Spoiled rotten. She seemed to inherit talent from both sides. She was singing and dancing on the stage of the Apollo by the time she was a teenager.”

  “So you kept in touch?”

  “I sent a check once a year, and her grandmother wrote back, until Margaret was grown. Until she was through the Actors Studio.”

  “Where did she think the money came from?”

  Emily smiled. “I doubt that she asked. Don’t children just take whatever is handed to them? Think it’s their due?”

  “You’re right. Of course they do. And her coming to Atlanta? That was just a fluke?”

  “Entirely. She’d been with a rep company in New York for a long while. It came through Atlanta on tour and Margaret saw an opportunity here for building the kind of company she’d always wanted. And, with sheer grit, she did it.”

  “Not knowing about Felicity? About you?”

  “Not until recently. A few months ago her grandfather told her on his deathbed that her mother hadn’t died at her birth, which is the story she’d been told. He gave her enough information to lead her to me. To us.” Emily shook her head. “Of course, she already knew us. Felicity had been a patron of the theater, on its board, since its founding.”

  “Then what?”

  “She invited me to lunch. Confronted me. You see, she thought, from what her grandfather said, that I was her mother.”

  “Jesus. What did you do?”

  “Well, at first I tried to bluff my way through it. It was awful. I didn’t know what to do, and I had no warning. There we were, in the middle of lunch at the Ritz-Carlton, and out of the blue, Margaret starts screaming at me.”

  “She was angry, of course. Terribly hurt.”

  “She was furious. Unfortunately, what you don’t know is that Margaret inherited her mother’s manic-depression. And she can’t drink at all. It sets her off onto wild tangents. She’d come well fortified that day. Had a couple of martinis and she was raving.”

  “What did you do?”

  “The worst thing possible. I told her about Felicity. Somehow I thought if I told her the truth, everything would be fine. Why I didn’t realize that it was far too late is beyond me.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking. I felt so guilty. She got me in such a state.”

  “And?”

  “She called me all kinds of terrible things, and then she stormed out the dining room. Oh, it was quite something.” Emily laughed in spite of herself. “It’s ridiculous, but I replay that scene again and again in my mind, and I always see it like something from a soap opera. Something I’d dismiss as nonsense and switch off.”

  “And yet—”

  “And yet it’s the stuff of our lives. My life and Felicity’s.”

  “Then?”

  “She went straight to our house. Felicity was home, puttering with her flowers or something, and Margaret barged right in, yelling at her, screaming. Felicity was aghast. She didn’t know what had hit her.”

  “But she figured out who Margaret was?”

  “She had no earthly idea. I mean, she knew Margaret, Margaret her friend, Margaret from the theater. But even after Margaret confronted her with the true facts, well, it made no sense to her. You see, Felicity believed that her baby had died over fifty years ago, in part because she wanted to. The next step was to repress the whole incident, the fact that the baby ever existed, Johnny, everything. Of course, when she’s not doing well, bits of it pop out, wriggle through the seams, but most of the time it never happened. She’s wiped that slate clean.”

  “Did you try to explain this to Margaret?”

  “Explain? I couldn’t explain anything. She’d already gone by the time I got there. Felicity was a lunatic. It took me days to get the story out of her. And Margaret wouldn’t return my calls.”

  “But I don’t understand. Now Margaret seems to be—you were at her party. Both of you. And Laura, her daughter—Jesus, Felicity’s granddaughter—comes to Felicity for coaching.”

  “Yes.” Emily smiled. “There was that horrible day, and then a silence, and then
—poof! It was as if it’d never happened. Margaret still wouldn’t talk with me, but suddenly one afternoon Felicity—who, of course, jammed that ugly incident away in a corner—said that Margaret had called and invited her to a dinner party. Had someone she wanted Felicity to meet. An old friend.”

  She gave Sam the nod, and Sam cocked a finger like a gun and named the name.

  “Randolph Percy.”

  Seventeen

  Sam was driving over to Sweet Auburn to the Players to find Margaret Landry. She wanted to talk with her. Now.

  It was no coincidence that Margaret had introduced Randolph Percy to Felicity. She knew he was trouble. More than trouble. Percy was a weapon if pointed in the right direction. She’d wager Margaret had done more than that. She’d oiled and loaded him and slipped his safety.

  The light changed and a horn behind her honked. She sped along DeKalb Avenue, a utility street, graceless, commercial, running beside the railroad tracks from Decatur into Atlanta, the same path that had transported Confederate soldiers in a vain attempt to save the city from the Yankees.

  Okay. Margaret, angry as shit, fueled by gin, or maybe vodka, riding on the selfsame roller coaster of mania and depression as Felicity, introduces Percy to her mother. Then sits back and waits for him to kill her.

  But he doesn’t. He falls in love with Felicity—truly. And refuses to do her in.

  Bullshit. He doesn’t need to kill her because she gives him what he wants for the present, and maybe she’s going to give him the rest in her will.

  Fine. So what happened? How come Felicity’s still doing fine and Percy’s dead?

  Felicity caught on and killed him first.

  Or—Emily, who knew the whole story from the beginning, cut Margaret and Percy off at the pass.

  Did Percy know what Margaret was up to?

  Did it matter?

  What else? Who else?

  Ah, the lovely Laura.

  And what was her role in this scenario?

  Her mother told her about Felicity and Emily—the two high and mighty Miss Annes, denying her her birthright—not to mention a goodly fortune.

  Laura helps her mother cook up the scheme for revenge. Whatever it is. But something goes wrong, and that’s why Laura’s at the Edwardses’ house.