Playing the Devil

by R. J. Lee

  Hollis looked as if he might faint and fanned himself. “Please, please forgive me. Where are my manners? There’s a table right over there against the wall. Oh, and would you like some of this wine I’ve been drinking? It’s just one of our drier Rosalie muscadines. I’m not a big fan of the sweet ones. They cloy on my palate. Or I also have some sparkling water or cider chilling in the mini-fridge in the back room if you’d prefer that.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Wendy said, as they seated themselves and settled in. “I’ve just had an enormous lunch with my editor at The Toast of Rosalie. I may never eat or drink anything again.”

  “Let me guess. Shrimp and grits?”

  “What else?” Then Wendy began making notes. “Give me just a minute to get caught up.”

  Hollis waited patiently for her to finish and then said, “Was there anything in particular you wanted to know about Mother and the RCC?”

  “Yes. The changes Deedah has been making. They seem to have been well received by everyone except Brent Ogle, of course. Would you confirm that that’s an accurate statement? ”

  Hollis did not answer immediately, but Wendy could tell he was enthralled with the question by the sly expression on his face. “Perfectly accurate,” he began finally. “And I’ve been so pumped about the Bridge Bunch because I’ve loved the game since Mother taught it to me when I was in high school. Then I found a bunch of guys in the dorm at Tulane who swore by it, too. But then . . . but then . . .”

  Wendy noted the downturn in his tone and on his face as he came to a halt. “But then what?”

  “Would you believe I couldn’t find three other people down in New Orleans who liked to play? All those years, I went without it. Not just cold turkey but Ice Age turkey practically. And then suddenly, you and Mother came to my rescue, and I was playing again. Not only that, but you and I had won that first rubber before things came to a screeching halt with all that macho foolishness Brent Ogle stirred up. Of course, he was always doing things like that.” Hollis gave Wendy a desperate glance, and his nostrils flared for a few seconds. “Please tell me you’re not going along with Mother on suspending play until this grievous murder is solved. Pretty please with brown sugar on it.”

  “Oh, that,” Wendy said, somewhat surprised that he had gone there. “I have to confess I wasn’t convinced we should stop playing, either. I told her I thought that maybe it might make us look guilty. But your mother prevailed in our discussion. At least for the time being.”

  “And you don’t think you can change her mind?”

  Wendy shook her head slowly but said nothing.

  “Foot.”

  Wendy was amused by his response. She had expected something more dramatic and colorful, perhaps something even profane, followed by Hollis draining his wineglass. “At any rate, we’ve gotten off the subject a little bit. Tell me a little more about your mother’s mission at the RCC from your point of view.”

  “She and I have discussed it at length, of course, and Mother doesn’t want to compete socially with the garden clubs. She knows she couldn’t do that, as established as they all are. But she feels the RCC is too much of a ‘jock place’ and certain people are uncomfortable with that. It’s not exactly my cup of tea, either.” He paused and managed a coy smile. “I take that back. I do love to stay in shape with my swimming. I’ll miss it grievously during the winter months ahead. But the point is, Mother doesn’t see any harm in softening the place’s sharp, masculine edges. As you probably know, Brent Ogle was dead set against everything Mother was trying to do. I’ve developed a pretty tough skin over the years because of my being . . . different and all, but nothing riles me up quicker than someone attacking my mother in any shape, form, or fashion. Where family is concerned, I can be fierce.”

  Wendy was surprised by Hollis’s intensity near the end of his lengthy speech. She flashed back to the discussion she and Ross had had about the “rage” reflected in the act of someone clubbing Brent Ogle with that pestle. Were mother and son both capable of such rage on behalf of each other? She found herself shuddering noticeably at the notion of Deedah, particularly, being that vicious and out of control. It did not suit her persona at all.

  “What’s the matter?” Hollis said, picking up on her discomfort.

  “It’s nothing, really,” she told him, recovering quickly. “Just a weird little chill that went up my spine.”

  He leaned in, again talking out of the side of his mouth. “There’s a rumor Halloween’s coming up soon.” He paused and then said, “Boo!”

  They both chuckled, and after a decent time, Wendy said in a serious tone, “Unfortunately, the RCC has become its own House of Horrors lately. It’s really put our image behind the eight ball.”

  “Mother insisted that Brent Ogle had already turned it into a hostile place during all the time he and Mr. Voss ran things,” Hollis said. “And then right there at the end he threatened to take his ball and run away so nobody could play anymore. It would have broken Mother’s heart had he lived to do that.”

  “But he didn’t. Someone saw to that.”

  Now it was Hollis’s turn to reflect discomfort. “Yes . . . they did. I . . . I can’t pretend that I’m not glad it happened, though.”

  Wendy didn’t hesitate. “I think everyone is being honest about that—just as you are. No reason to say otherwise.”

  Suddenly, Hollis took a deep breath that seemed to consume all the air in the room. For a second, Wendy thought something might be wrong with him physically. “Are you all right? How much of that wine have you had?”

  There was another, smaller intake of air. “Maybe one glass too much. But it’s not that. It’s just that there’s something . . .” He pressed his lips together and maintained the pose for a while. Had his teeth been showing, it would have amounted to a genuine grimace.

  Wendy softened her voice as much as she could. “What is it? Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Hollis tried his best to relax his facial muscles, but he couldn’t seem to do it. Tension oozed from his every contorted feature. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone. Not even Mother. And I certainly didn’t tell Mr. Rierson when he interviewed me Saturday. I’m actually supposed to see him tomorrow. He just called me before you came in and told me he wants to question me again. I’m sure that implies that I’m a more serious suspect now, doesn’t it?”

  Wendy continued to try to soothe him. “Not necessarily. It’s probably the same thing he’s doing with everyone. It’s his job to explore all the possibilities. Don’t read things into it that may not be there.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but this thing I haven’t told anyone about is sorta complicated,” Hollis continued, his voice strained and thin. “I just think I ought to tell you first and see if you think I should go ahead and tell Mr. Rierson.”

  Déjà vu was practically pushing Wendy out of her chair. Was this going to be Carly Ogle all over again? Wendy was beginning to feel like a priest on the other side of the confessional. Something about her personality seemed to be having that effect on people these days.

  “Go ahead then,” she said. “I think if you don’t tell someone, you might explode, judging by the way you’re acting right now.”

  Hollis put both his hands on the table, palms down, and leaned toward her with a suggestion of tears welling up. “I haven’t mentioned this because I thought it might incriminate me. You see, there was a short time on Saturday that I was alone out there under the portico after Carly Ogle had left. I don’t know what got into me, but I decided I was going to run back to that hot tub and confront Brent Ogle about those threats he’d made to my mother. Even in the dark with just the light from my phone. I wanted to tell him off for that and for the way he’d been treating me since I came back from New Orleans and started coming out to use the RCC pool. I’ve been bullied all my life, and I decided it was time for me to finally stand up for myself—and my mother, of course.” He paused for a breath.

  “So are you
telling me that you followed through on that?”

  “I intended to. But . . .”

  “Go on. You’ve gotten this far.”

  “I . . . started following the deck around to the hot tub. But when I was halfway there, I had second thoughts and sat down in one of the rockers to think it through again. Finally, I decided to forge ahead. I even called out Mr. Ogle’s name when I got close enough, but he didn’t answer me. I called out again. Same thing—no response. And then when I got closer, I could see why he didn’t answer me. I shined my phone down on him and saw that awful gash on the top of his head and his eyes so blank, and I just knew he had to be dead looking like that. And then I panicked. I was so horrified that I didn’t even think to go back the way I came. My brain just wasn’t functioning. Instead, I just bolted through the hallway door, and on the way, I ran into someone and knocked them down and then I ran off as fast as I could toward Mother’s office.”

  Wendy nodded eagerly. “That was Carly Ogle you knocked down. She had no idea who it was. She said she couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”

  “I can believe it. Everything happened so fast in the darkness that there wasn’t time for me to make head nor tail of anything, either. My adrenaline felt like a bathtub overflowing. Or at least it seemed that way to me. So I didn’t have the least bit of trouble expressing shock when you and Miz Ogle came in a little bit later and gave everyone the bad news that I already knew about.”

  Wendy finished writing something and then looked up. “So it was your footsteps both Carly and I heard.”

  “I admit it. That was me. Those were my fear-laden sandals you heard making tracks. But can you see why I didn’t want to bring this up to Mr. Rierson on Saturday? It puts me right at the crime scene at around the right time with a motive and an opportunity. Except I didn’t have that pestle in my hand, I swear, and I didn’t club Mr. Ogle with it. But would anyone believe that I didn’t have it with me? Now, there’s my dilemma. What should I do?”

  “You must trust me when I tell you that Mr. Rierson needs to hear all of this when you meet with him,” Wendy said, stretching forward a bit to put a hand over his. “Don’t leave anything out. Tell him that you told me all of this, too. And tell him why you were reluctant to reveal it the first time around. Being honest about everything now is going to help you in the long run. I find your story believable, and I don’t see you as the type of person who would commit that sort of violent act, even if you’d had enough of Brent Ogle’s threats and mistreatment.”

  Hollis grimaced briefly. “If only I had stayed out under the portico the whole time, or left when Miz Ogle did.”

  “Don’t play what if ? It won’t get you anywhere. What counts now is the truth. If you want to eliminate yourself as a suspect, you must tell Mr. Rierson everything you’ve told me. There was no DNA of any kind in or around the hot tub, except Brent Ogle’s. You coming forward like this was exactly the right thing to do.”

  There was a distinct sigh of relief from Hollis. “Thanks. My instinct was to keep everything hidden from the second it happened. But then, I ran over somebody in my panic—Miz Ogle, you’ve said—and that meant that it would be no longer possible to keep everything hidden. After all, somebody had to be there in the hallway to collide with her. I’ve been terrified all this time that someone would put two and two together and come up with Hollis Hornesby of Hollow Horne. I’ve hardly slept, and Mother has been bugging me about going to the doctor and saying things to me like, ‘You look downright pekid. I know you never eat anything to speak of, so it’s no wonder you have no immune system.’ ”

  “She’s your mother. She can’t help it.”

  Hollis rolled his eyes, not once but twice. “It gets old. Mother is the most controlling person in the world. In that respect, she’s a lot like Mr. Ogle was about running things.” Then he realized what he had just said and briefly covered his mouth with his hand. “I don’t think that came out the way I wanted it to. I didn’t mean to say that. It doesn’t make Mother look too good, does it? You’re here to zero in on all the positives, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. But don’t worry. I wouldn’t even think of using that particular comment of yours.”

  “Even if they always say in vino veritas?”

  “Yes. Even if they always say that.”

  Hollis went silent for a while, the creases across his forehead growing deeper. He made a fist of his right hand and nestled it under his chin, supporting it with his elbow on the table. It made him come off like some sort of hippie oracle. “I don’t know why I should be feeling so guilty about discovering the body the way I did. I wasn’t going to do anything but chew him out. And I guess I felt that I could pull it off because he’d be there in the hot tub with hardly any clothes on and I’d be hovering above him and have the upper hand. All I wanted to do was to strike a blow for every kid that’s been bullied at recess, or on a school bus, or just anywhere at all growing up. I wanted to tell Brent Ogle once and for all that I wasn’t afraid of him and that he could deep-six all his snarky remarks about me. But I never got the chance.”

  Wendy nearly mimicked his sad expression as she spoke up. “You’re absolutely right about one thing. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty about what you wanted to do. No harm would have come to Brent Ogle if he’d gotten a good calling out for once. It was long overdue. Now you, on the other hand, might have been splashed with a lot of hot water, at the very least.”

  Her comment lightened the mood immediately, and they both managed to laugh for a few seconds.

  “So you definitely think it’s the right thing to do for me to level with Mr. Rierson, then,” Hollis said.

  “I promise you it will help clear things up. In order for him or anyone else working on the case to solve it, they’ll need to settle on who didn’t do it before they can pin down who did. Unless someone just steps up and conveniently confesses.”

  Hollis still looked somewhat worried. “But my telling him this won’t prove I didn’t do it.”

  “Are you lying to me about it, any or all of it?”

  “No,” Hollis said emphatically. “I’m telling you exactly what happened that evening and why.”

  “And I believe you.”

  “Will Mr. Rierson?”

  “I think he will. There’s still no DNA linking you to the pestle. Or anyone else, for that matter. The water in the hot tub took care of that. And you’ll clear up who knocked down Carly Ogle in the hallway. Was that person a man or a woman? Was that person the killer or just at the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “I see your point,” Hollis said, looking more comfortable. “Maybe I can get some decent sleep tonight after this.”

  “I’m betting you will.”

  Eventually, the conversation settled into a son’s admiration for his mother, even before she’d taken over the RCC—material Wendy would have to evaluate and then integrate carefully to avoid making her feature sound too maudlin and not objective enough. And then Hollis made one last pitch for his paintings.

  “If nothing else, they are madly colorful,” he was saying as the two of them browsed the Mardi Gras section depicting tons of multi-colored beads flying through the air off gigantic, fanciful floats.

  “It wouldn’t be Mardi Gras without purple, green, and gold trinkets, and all sorts of doubloons, not to mention every other color under the rainbow decorating the floats and in the costumes,” Wendy said. “But you know what? I’m going to have to take a rain check right now on buying any new paintings for my house. You may not know this, but my late mother, Valerie, was also an acrylic artist. While you were down in New Orleans all those years, she specialized in Rosalie scenery, particularly studies of the Mississippi River. Some were by moonlight, some by sunlight, and I have lots of her work on my walls in my little bungalow.”

  Hollis sounded almost apologetic. “No, I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry to hear she’s not painting anymore. But I’d love to see your mother’s work sometime.�
�

  “Next time I have some people over, I’ll invite you and Deedah, and you can check everything out.”

  “That would be fabulous,” he told her. And then he finally drained the last of his wine with a flourish and put his free hand on her shoulder. “If what I’ve told you today—and I promise to tell Mr. Rierson the same thing—if it helps get this thing solved soon, then hallelujah. I am so itching to play bridge like you wouldn’t believe. And if there’s any way you and I can be partners again, let’s arrange it. I think we had something almost psychic going between us.”

  “Aha,” Wendy said, shooting him a playful smile. “Metaphysical bridge is the only kind worth playing.”

  Hollis bowed low. “I hear you loud and clear, O wise one.”

  * * *

  Wendy’s brain seemed nearly as full as her stomach had been after her lunch with Lyndell. On the way back to her car, she kept thinking about the way Carly and Hollis had volunteered information they could easily have kept to themselves. Had they done that of their own accord, or had there been something of an organized effort about it all? Would there soon be others coming her way and marching to that same tune?

  On the one hand, she remained convinced that she had done the right thing by advising Carly not to tell Ross about her wicked thoughts regarding her husband once the RCC had been plunged into darkness. On the other hand, she felt that Ross needed to know what Hollis had actually done. That was the difference. Something swirling around inside somebody’s head versus something that had actually taken place that evening. Thoughts versus action. She allowed herself a hint of a grin as she remembered she had just used the word metaphysical before saying goodbye to Hollis at his gallery. Murder, however, was not the sort of thing that lent itself to anything other than hard-core evidence and cause of death.

  And then, right after she had slid into the front seat of her Impala and shut the door, it struck her. She was going on the unquestioned assumption that both Carly and Hollis had been telling her the truth. As far as she was concerned, they were. It felt right to her in her gut. She really had no reason not to believe either of them.