“Yes!” He laughed at the response on the other end of the line. “Me, too! Can’t wait to see her. But let’s save it for a while. This is rude, but why don’t you bring your own bottle and sit in your car around back for a while? I think if you’re patient, we’ll find something to amuse you.”
*
“Well, it’s awfully good to see y’all.” Kay Kay gave Totsie a hug, then extended her hand, missing Sam’s by just a hair. The fading Texas beauty was already drunk. “Come on in and have a little tiddly. Edison will be with us in just a moment.”
Totsie stepped toward the sideboard in the sitting room. Crystal decanters with little silver nametags littered its top. “Don’t mind if I do, Mama,” she said, her hand on the vodka. “Sam?”
“Perrier or soda water.”
“You are a party-pooper,” Kay Kay said, slurring a little, “aren’t you?”
“Had to give up the drinking.” Sam smiled, but inside she wondered, as she had frequently in the years she’d been sober, how many times she had made a fool of herself in public, been a sloppy drunk just like Kay Kay. “But not the good times,” she finished.
“Don’t know how you think you can have a party without a little drink.” Kay Kay turned as her husband entered the room. “Isn’t that so, Edison?”
“Whatever you say, dear.”
It was a condescending smile, thought Sam, which reeked of smug self-assurance. It was a smile that she had seen all her life on the faces of certain men who thought they pulled all the strings, thought that they had those strings wrapped around a finger in their pocket, that all they had to do was crook that finger and you’d jump because that string was tied to you.
“Samantha.” He pulled her to his shirtfront in a big hug of assumed familiarity. “So good to see you. How are you doing?”
“Fine.” She leaned back and said into his face, “It’s good of you to give me the time tonight. I won’t take long. Don’t want to keep you from your dinner.”
He relaxed his hold on her. “Oh, we eat late—when we eat.” And he smiled that oily smile again at Kay Kay, who lifted her drink to him in salute. “We’re glad to do it. Anything for the memory of Forrest. Isn’t that right, dear?”
He turned to Totsie and gave her a hug, too. “How you doing, baby? Haven’t seen you in a couple of days. You’re looking a little peaked.”
“I’m fine, Daddy.” She pulled herself straight, shoulders back like a little soldier.
“Well,” he said, gesturing, “shall we sit?”
Sam led them through an easy ramble first, just as she had done with Totsie earlier. Drawing them out was an easy task because for most Southerners, storytelling is as natural as breathing. Up and down the rhythms flew; she needed only a light touch on the reins to keep them going in the right direction.
Though Edison took center stage, from time to time Kay Kay chimed in, adding a detail. Totsie was quiet, a small smile fixed in place. She looked like any dutiful Southern wife at a dinner party. Considering her earlier conversation with Sam in front of the love nest, it was a masterful display of self-control.
And throughout the talk, the liquor flowed. Before long, three decanters sat on the coffee table before them. Bourbon for Edison, vodka for Totsie. Kay Kay drank gin.
An hour passed, then two. Sam knew that good manners called for her to leave and let these people eat their dinner. But politeness wasn’t her goal.
Edison was just finishing a story about Forrest chartering a bus to take a group of friends down to Auburn for a football game. “He went to Georgia, you know, undergrad, and was a rabid Bulldogs fan. He insisted that we all come along. Picked up the whole tab. Had the trip catered, too—champagne all the way. First class.”
“He was a very generous man,” Totsie murmured. “And a great practical joker,” Kay Kay said, reaching for her gin. She was drinking it neat now.
“Really?” Sam asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, yes.” Kay Kay waved a hand in an extravagant gesture. “Not so much in the last few years, but he pulled off some lulus in his time.”
“Go on,” Sam encouraged.
“Don’t you remember, Edison,” she asked, “that time we got such terrible service in that awful Italian restaurant on Piedmont—Gallo’s, was that it?”
“Yes,” Edison said, chuckling. “Gallo’s. They went out of business.”
“And Forrest helped them along. He went back that next Saturday afternoon dressed like a Georgia Power man and turned off their electricity. Right when they were getting ready for a huge wedding party. It was wonderful.”
Kay Kay laughed. Then for a moment there was only the tinkle of crystal and ice in the room. Sam waited.
“Oh, and remember?” Kay Kay went on as the gin lubricated her reminiscences. “That story he told us about when he was in school at Virginia, in law school. And he had this professor he didn’t like?”
“I don’t recall this one.”
“Well, maybe you weren’t there when he told it. That’s right,” she gushed, patting Edison’s knee and sloshing a little gin on his trousers. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I think you were away on business, and Forrest and Queen were over for drinks. Are you sure you never heard it?”
“No. Go on.” Edison’s voice was impatient, but Kay Kay didn’t notice.
“Anyway, he told this hilarious story about this awful professor he had. Everybody simply detested the man. And what Forrest did was, he waited until almost the end of the term, kissy-facing up to the man the whole time, and then he went to a printer in some little town in Virginia, away from Richmond.”
“Charlottesville,” said Edison.
“I thought you never heard this story.” Kay Kay turned to her husband, slopping a little more gin.
“Jesus, Kay Kay. Be more careful.” Edison stood, wiping at his arm with a cocktail napkin.
“Well, how do you know it wasn’t Richmond?” she insisted.
“Because UVA is in Charlottesville.”
“Oh.” Kay Kay sat for a moment digesting that fact, her face as placid as a cow’s.
“So what happened?” asked Sam, who’d gotten a tingling in her toes when Kay Kay mentioned the printer. She thought she knew where this story was headed.
“Well, he went to this printer outside of Charlottesville, and he got him to print up hundreds of invitations to a party at this professor’s house. And he sent them to all the faculty and all the law students, but he didn’t send one to the professor. So this professor and his wife were sitting around one evening, watching TV or whatever, when all these hundreds of people showed up.”
Kay Kay sat back in her seat with a triumphant grin on her face. The room was silent.
“Don’t you think that’s funny?” she continued when no one spoke. “I mean, don’t you get it, that all these people were there for a party, and the professor didn’t have anything but a six-pack, maybe, and some peanuts? I thought it was the funniest thing I ever heard. I’ll never forget it. I’d love to do that to somebody sometime.”
Then she popped her hand to her mouth like a naughty child who’s spilled the beans.
And you did, didn’t you? Sam thought in the deepening silence. She glanced at Edison Kay. He gave her an even, curtained look in return.
You crafty son-of-a-bitch, she thought. Poker players, you lawyers, all of you. You know that I know that Kay Kay sent those invitations. But why? Why was she punishing Ridley? Because she knew her daughter was having an affair with him? You knew that, too, didn’t you? You know everything. You do hold all the strings.
“Well, it’s getting a little late.” Edison stood. “Maybe we ought to finish this up another time, Samantha.”
“I still don’t know why nobody thinks that’s funny,” Kay Kay complained.
“Because it’s not, Mother.” Totsie’s voice was on the edge.
“Please don’t bother. I can find my way out,” Sam said, and hurriedly stepped into the hallway outside the room.
She didn’t want to let Edison usher her out the front door. Not just yet, for she could feel something coming. She stood stock still in the hall, listening. This was about to get very good.
“You’re drunk, Mother. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“Listen, little lady.” Kay Kay was getting her Texas up. She pointed a finger in Totsie’s face. “Don’t you tell your mother what to do. I was drinking before you were born.”
“Obviously. You’ve been drunk my whole life.”
“Honey, honey, calm down.” Edison put his arm around his daughter. “What’s all this to-do? Come on, sugar. Spend the night here with us. Go upstairs to your old room. Goodness,” he said, brushing Totsie’s blond hair back from her forehead, “I didn’t think this talk about Forrest was going to get everyone so upset.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Totsie wailed, as if she were twelve years old. “I miss him so.”
The vodka had caught up with her. The vodka and the grief.
“Well, well.” He patted her on the back. “We all do. Forrest was such a good friend to us all.”
“Yes, wasn’t he?” Kay Kay added, seeming to focus more clearly than she had in the past hour. “He and Queen. Such good friends to us all.”
Edison shot Kay Kay a warning look.
“He was my best friend,” Totsie continued. “Oh, Daddy, I loved him so.”
“I know, pumpkin. We all did.”
Sam stepped back into the room. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I forgot my…” She let her words trail off, but Totsie, as she’d hoped, kept going.
“But not like I did,” the girl wailed, as if it were suddenly important that she differentiate her love, her grief from theirs, that she get the sympathy that was her just due, no matter what its cost. “He was my lover.”
Kay Kay dropped her glass. It thudded on the heavy carpet, and the gin spread in a darkening circle.
“You knew that, you bastard,” Kay Kay snarled at her husband. “You knew that all the time, didn’t you?” Then she lunged toward him with one arm drawn back.
Edison grabbed her wrist. “Hush now, Kay Kay. You’re upset. You’re drunk.”
“You’re goddamned right I’m upset! Did you give Forrest your daughter, Edison? Did you give him her body in exchange for his silence? You’d do anything, wouldn’t you, anything, to keep the money flowing—that pipeline of money that fuels your dick. Isn’t that what makes you hard, Ed? I know I haven’t for years. But money does, doesn’t it? Money does the trick.”
“No!” Totsie screamed. “Shut up!”
Edison turned as if suddenly realizing that Sam was still in the room. “You’ll have to excuse us, Samantha. My girls seem to be a little hysterical tonight.”
Sam smiled and stood her ground.
Edison didn’t return the smile. “I hate to be rude, but…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Men like him didn’t have to. They were used to people moving out of their way at the slightest innuendo.
“You hate to be rude!” Totsie shrieked. “All this goddamned standing on ceremony. Forrest’s dead and buried, and we all walk around pretending that we’re at a tea party!”
“Come on,” Kay Kay said tiredly, as if she’d been deflated. “Let’s go to bed, Totsie.”
But Totsie was hardly ready for bed. “That’s all anyone ever does in this goddamned house! In this goddamned town! Just sit around being polite and telling amusing stories until something ugly comes up, something unpleasant, something like real life, and then suddenly everybody excuses themselves from the room. ‘Pardon me,’ they say, ‘I’ve got to check on something.’ Or, ‘I’m so tired. I have to go to bed.’ Well, check on this. I killed Forrest!”
“Totsie, no!” Kay Kay screamed.
“What are you talking about, child?” Edison had the most peculiar look on his face.
“I killed him! I did it!” Totsie was hysterical, totally out of control. “We came back from San Francisco, though Forrest pretended that he was still there, still gone. And I drove up to the falls with him. We went in separate cars. We took a little cabin up there, at the base of Apalachee.”
Sam remembered seeing the cabins there, up above the campgrounds.
“Forrest said that he had some business he needed to take care of. With you, Daddy.” She whirled and pointed her finger at him. “With you and Sheriff Dodd. He said he wanted to tell you that he knew what was going on with the land deals, and the money, and that you had to stop.” Totsie’s breathing was ragged.
Edison shrugged. “It was nothing, honey. Just bending conventions a little among old friends. I’ve known Buford Dodd for a long time.”
“And Jeb Saunders?” Totsie flung the name at him like a weapon.
“Yes, dear.” His voice was soothing, as if he were talking to an upset child. “Jeb’s an associate of the firm. We do a lot of business together.”
“Shut up!” Kay Kay spat the words in her husband’s face. “Shut up! I know what you’re doing. You always do it! You’re twisting this to be what you want. Well, it’s not. It’s not what you want at all. Totsie’s talking about killing Forrest Ridley. Do you understand that?” Veins stood out in her neck; her eyes protruded.
Totsie raced on as if she couldn’t stop. “When he came back to the cabin after seeing you all, he was upset. He said that he had found proof of lots more money that you all had hidden, that you were going to ruin the firm, and that he had to turn you in.
“But you said, he said you said that he couldn’t do that. That it would ruin the firm and my good name. He said you said that Mama and I would never be able to hold our heads up in the Driving Club again. That we’d be banned. As if that mattered.” Her laughter was manic.
“I told him that, I told him I didn’t care. All I wanted was for us to be like we used to before I told him about your crooked deals. Why did I ever tell him?” She cradled her wet face in splayed fingers. “If I hadn’t, he’d be alive now.”
“Totsie, Totsie,” her mother crooned, hugging herself with her arms. “It’s not your fault. What these men do is never our fault.”
“It is, Mama. You don’t understand. He said that he was going to have to think it all over. That it was probably a good idea if we stopped seeing one another until all this was worked out.
“‘No!’ I screamed. I was crazy. I couldn’t stand the idea that he was going to leave me. I’ve never been so happy, never before in my life. I was crying and pulling on his clothes. I was on my knees begging, ‘No, Forrest, no.’
“‘Baby,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand. This is wrong. It’s all wrong. I have to think this over.’
“And then something snapped inside me. It was like something broke. I just didn’t care anymore. If I couldn’t have Forrest, I couldn’t—I couldn’t go on.”
“Sugar, sugar,” Kay Kay moaned, partly for her daughter and partly for herself. “Oh, Jesus, look where they push you. Right to the brink. And over.”
“I ran out the door to my car,” Totsie said. “But I’d left my keys inside. Then I grabbed my gun from the glove compartment.”
“Oh, Totsie.” Kay Kay’s eyes were wide, like those of a frightened horse.
“I ran out into the dark. I ran faster and faster, I didn’t really know where I was going. I just kept running. I could hear Forrest behind me. He was calling for me to stop. But I kept running, up, up. ‘I’ll kill myself when I get to the top,’ I kept whispering to myself. ‘When I get to the top.’ Then I wouldn’t have this terrible pain inside. It would all be over. It was already over, don’t you understand? If I couldn’t have Forrest, I was already dead.”
“Oh, honey,” Kay Kay crooned. “How could you think that?”
It’s easy, Sam thought, don’t you know that? Hanging in there with Edison all these years? Isn’t desertion your greatest fear, Kay Kay? Being alone?
Sam turned and looked at Edison. He was standing completely still, like a stone statue in a rainstorm. It was all washing over him. All just words. He was merely
waiting for the facts beneath the emotions, the facts that might relate to him, the facts that might cost him money or power, the important things.
Totsie raced on. “So I kept running and running. A couple of times I fell, and I was afraid that he was going to catch me and stop me. But”—and she smiled then, a wonderful ruined smile that Sam didn’t want to look at too long because she felt it might break your heart—“Forrest wasn’t really much of an athlete. The most exercise he ever got was the walks over to our house on Virginia Circle.” She turned to Sam, who nodded.
“What house?” Kay Kay demanded.
Totsie shook her head. It wasn’t important now.
She pushed on. “And finally I was at the top, at the top of the path, the top of the falls. I stood there, holding the gun in my hand, listening to the rush of all that water. Before it comes to the falls it’s very quiet, you know. It’s really just a little stream, but it grows as it falls over, and then it bounces, it spews, it foams. Of course, I couldn’t see any of that in the darkness. I could only hear it down below. I stood there, Mama, thinking how glad I was that you taught me to shoot when I was a little girl, and that you’d always insisted that I keep a gun in my car for protection. And then I turned the gun toward my head.”
“Oh, Totsie.” Kay Kay was sobbing.
“But I’d waited too long, listening to the falls. Forrest ran up behind me. He grabbed me. And then the gun went off. There was a report, and he jolted. We had our arms around each other. And then he fell.” She looked at Sam as if Sam could make some sense out of this tale she was telling that didn’t make any sense to her, even though she’d been there. “He fell over the rail, over the falls. I couldn’t even scream. I just stood there, like it was a joke. Like it was a video that any moment I could reverse, and he would come back up the falls, over the rail, and I would hold him again in my arms. Then I would push the stop button, and that would be the end. There wouldn’t be any gunshot. We would stand there at the top of the falls in the dark, and he would whisper in my ear, ‘I love you, baby,’ and then we’d go to bed.” She whispered, “Just like that.”
First Kill All the Lawyers Page 14
