by Greg Iles
“You couldn’t have seen me go into the Eola that night, because I wasn’t there.”
“Whatever you say, Rock. Just don’t push me, okay? Don’t even dream about going to the cops over this pumping unit thing.”
Waters shook his head in disbelief. “Is that what you think I’d do? Turn you in to the police? I’m trying to help you, man.”
Cole looked uncertain.
“You know what this tells me? You wouldn’t hesitate to turn me in for something. Is that what you’re doing? Threatening to turn me in if I don’t pay off your debts?”
“Have I done that?” Cole snapped. “Have you heard me say that?”
“It sure sounded like you were leading up to it.”
“Goddamn it, Rock, everything’s just gotten fucked up. And I can’t see how to unfuck it.”
“This is a sad day, partner. We’ve known each other almost forty years. And this is how it ends up?”
Cole suddenly looked close to tears. “You don’t understand, John. This isn’t just about money. I don’t pay these guys? They take it out of my hide. And maybe they don’t stop there, you know? There’s no way Jenny can make it if something happens to me. I gotta find a way to pay this off.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. I been doing stuff like selling that pumping unit just to keep up the interest on the debt. I mean, what the hell? If the EPA thing goes against us, we’re going to lose it all anyway.”
This was true enough. And given his present difficulties, Waters could care less about the dollar value of a pumping unit. “Listen to me,” he said. “Think about when we were kids together. Those summers by St. Catherine’s Creek. The forts we built…the stuff we did together. You at my father’s funeral.”
Cole nodded. “That was a long time ago.”
“Not for me. For me it was yesterday. Now I want you to tell me something. Were you in with Eve on this thing from the start?”
“What thing?”
“Don’t lie, Cole. This is me. Did you feed Eve a bunch of stuff about Mallory and me so she could make me think I was going crazy?”
Cole did a first-rate impression of being shocked. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“You could sell a lot more pumping units with me out of the picture. Maybe even some production, if you forged my signature. And if you did it before the EPA lands on us with both feet, it might just buy your ass out of the hole.”
Cole’s mouth was hanging open. “Are you drunk?”
“I’m stone sober. I’m as sane as I’ve ever been, and I’m not going anywhere. You got it? I’ll be running this company till the EPA chains the door shut. And as of now, you’re making no solo decisions regarding cash flow, production, or anything else.”
“If you’re not drunk, you have gone crazy. You think I’d fuck my best friend like that?”
The hurt in his voice almost made Waters turn away, but this was no time to be soft. “I don’t know what to think anymore, partner. We’ve come to a pretty bad place.”
Cole shook his head, stepped forward, and put his beefy hands on Waters’s shoulders. “Rock,” he said in a cracked voice. “I’m under some real pressure, no lie. All told, I’m over six hundred grand in the hole. But I’d go down with my legs broken and a bullet in my head before I’d do something to hurt you or your family. That’s God’s truth.”
Despite his shock and fury, Waters felt tears sting his eyes. There was no doubt that Cole at least believed what he said. He started to press on with his accusations, as Penn would have wanted him to do, but he simply didn’t have it in him. He squeezed Cole’s arm and said, “I know you would, partner. I know.” Then he gave Cole a hug. He felt the big man shaking, and he knew then that Cole really was in the kind of trouble that some people never walked away from.
“Don’t sweat the little shit,” he said.
“And it’s all little shit,” Cole replied automatically.
They forced a laugh, and then Waters took out his keys.
“What are you going to do?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know. You just stay safe, okay? And don’t worry about that three-twenty.”
Cole took a step toward him. “Listen, John. I don’t know what you did exactly. But my offer for an alibi still stands. If you can’t figure a way out, come see me. We’ve dug ourselves out of holes before. Maybe we can do it again, if we stick together.”
Waters tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. Cole sounded so sincere, yet every word of it could be a lie.
The office was busy that afternoon. Monthly billing was going out to the coowners in all the wells, and Sybil couldn’t handle it alone. Since Cole was busy drinking and playing cards, that left Waters to fill in for him.
The printer jammed halfway through the job, and as he helped Sybil clear it, he felt tempted to ask her some questions. If she was sleeping with Cole, as he suspected, she might know a lot about his financial problems. She might also know if he’d had any recent contact with Eve. But Sybil seemed to be in a down mood, and he didn’t want her to think the company was in more trouble than she knew about already.
At a quarter to five, Sybil headed out to the post office to mail the bills. Cole still hadn’t returned, so Waters locked the office and headed home. He was nearly there when his cell phone rang, and he saw a mobile number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“This is your fellow Eagle Scout,” said a male voice.
Waters almost laughed at Penn Cage’s choice of code. “What’s going on?”
“We’re both on mobile phones. Where are you?”
“State Street, on my way home.”
“We need to talk. Your house?”
“Ah…I’d rather meet elsewhere.”
“Okay. How about the parking lot of Heard’s Music Company?”
The lot was only a few hundred yards from Waters’s driveway. “I’ll see you there.”
Waters hung up and sped past his driveway, then crossed one boulevard and turned into the music store parking lot. Waters had bought his last piano here, a nine-foot concert grand. As a boy, he and his mother could only dream of an instrument like that; now he owned a house that seemed incomplete without one. But for how long? he thought.
As he parked the Land Cruiser, Penn leaned out of a green Audi TT and motioned for him to get in. When Waters climbed into the convertible, Penn shook his hand and smiled.
“What’s up?” Waters asked. “Do you know something?”
“The police have a new lead. They’re keeping quiet about it, but Caitlin has a source inside the department.”
“And?”
Penn grimaced. “The guy thought he heard your name mentioned.”
“Shit.” A wild, unreasoning fear hit Waters in the bowels. “Was he sure?”
“Nothing’s sure yet. I don’t know what they have. Do you have any idea what it could be?”
Waters thought of the week at Bienville, then the nights at the Eola. “I don’t know. Maybe someone saw us, but we didn’t see them?”
“That may be it.”
“I’ve always been worried about Eve’s house. She’s bound to have had stuff about me in there.”
“Well, until we know something for sure, you should sit tight and stay calm. Go back over everything and try to anticipate the situation.”
Waters’s face suddenly felt cold.
“What is it, John?”
“I just talked to Cole, like you said to. Confronted him.”
“And?”
“He told me he knew I was with Eve at the Eola.”
Penn’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How could he know that?”
“He was coy about it. Said he followed me for a few days. But I think that was bullshit. I can’t see him doing that.”
“No. If he knows, it’s because Eve told him you would be there.” Penn tapped the steering wheel. “What if she called him to come up after you passed out, thinking he was going to do something to yo
u? When in reality he was going to kill her all along, and frame you.”
Waters shook his head. “Cole couldn’t do that.”
“Are you so sure? What did he say about selling the pumping unit?”
“He admitted it. He’s up to his eyeballs in debt. To bookies, Vegas casinos, everybody.”
Penn turned up his palms, as if this proved his case.
“Did you find out anything about Mallory’s diaries?” Waters asked, wanting to change the subject.
“As a matter of fact, I did. I talked to Mrs. Candler for quite a while. I told her I was thinking of doing a nonfiction book about Natchez, and naturally I’d want to include a chapter on our second Miss Mississippi. I got a good bit of information out of her before she got suspicious.”
“Such as?”
“About a year ago-sometime around her husband’s death-some of Mallory’s things disappeared from their house.”
Waters felt a strange premonition, but of what, he wasn’t sure. “Like what?”
“Mallory’s diaries, for one thing.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. Also some jewelry, all Mallory’s. And some personal things of Mallory’s that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but her.”
“What do you think?”
“That tells us that someone has been planning this scam on you for over a year. They broke into the Candler house and took personal things that would help authenticate Eve’s story.”
“How could they take things that no one would know were important but Mallory?”
“John, they were taken from her room. Obviously she had saved them for some sentimental reason. My guess is that if you hadn’t swallowed Eve’s story so quickly, those little items would have started making appearances in your life. On Eve’s arm, or in her purse, maybe.”
Waters felt a strange lightness in his limbs. He leaned back in the seat, unable to believe what he was hearing.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me about Mallory cutting herself,” Penn said. “You said you didn’t believe her when she told you that her father had sexually abused her.”
Waters nodded.
“Well, I’ve been asking questions about her family. Nobody could be very specific, but I got the feeling that Ben Candler was a little strange where sex was concerned.”
“How so?”
“A little pervy about young girls. He made inappropriate comments sometimes. He and his wife apparently had a nonsexual relationship. That’s the gist, anyway. The mother had an affair at some point, but when it threatened Ben’s political career, she ended it.”
“Political career? Shit, he was only a state representative.”
“Ben Candler took that very seriously, as you know.”
“Oh, do I. He liked to give you the impression that if the country went to DEF CON Three, he would be making the critical decisions about launching nuclear missiles.”
“You got it. And he held that job for six terms.”
“Old Ben knew how to kiss ass.”
“Yes, he did.”
“I’ll tell you this,” Waters said. “When I visited Mallory’s grave after the soccer game, I noticed two things I didn’t tell you. They didn’t seem important then. Her father is buried next to her. He has a small, cheap gravestone. And it was defaced, like someone had taken a crowbar to it.”
“Ben Candler only died about a year ago,” Penn said. “So Mallory couldn’t have defaced the stone. It could be his wife, I suppose. Or someone else he sexually harassed.”
Waters nodded, but that wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’ll tell you something else. It stunk by his grave.”
“What do you mean, stunk? Like what?”
“Urine. Like an animal came there every day and pissed on his grave.”
Penn looked incredulous. “I can’t see prim old Margaret Candler driving to the cemetery to piss on her husband’s grave every day.” He shook his head and laughed. “Maybe once a week, though.”
“Mallory would,” Waters said quietly.
“Mallory would what?”
“Go there every day and piss on his grave. She’d do it rain or shine for ten years. That’s the way she was.”
“Was,” Penn echoed. “That’s the operative word there, John. Focus on the present, all right?”
“Something’s been bothering me, Penn.”
“Jesus. Are you starting with the supernatural stuff again?”
“You tell me. One of the things that convinced me Eve was really Mallory was her scars. I didn’t tell you that before for fear you’d think I was crazy. Eve Sumner had cutting scars beneath her watch, and also on her inner thighs, just the way Mallory used to. And they weren’t all new. She’d been doing it for a long time.”
Penn was staring at him with worry in his eyes.
“And the night she died,” Waters went on, “she asked me to cut her during sex. She was really upset, and she wanted to be cut, just like Mallory did sometimes.”
Penn took hold of his wrist. “John, listen to me. They got those details from Mallory’s diaries. They had to.”
“You’re telling me Eve Sumner mutilated herself to convince me she was Mallory? And for a long period of time? Do you really think that’s possible?”
“People are quite capable of maiming themselves in pursuit of a goal, John. In the nineteen-fifties, inmates at Angola Prison slashed their Achilles tendons to draw attention to their plight. They permanently crippled themselves. What’s a few cuts on the surface of the skin compared to the money involved in this case? And we know from the break-in at the Candler house that they were planning this scam for at least a year.”
Waters pondered this in silence. He wanted to believe Penn, but his memory of Eve’s desolate face as she begged him to cut her was too vivid to call a lie.
“Stick to realities,” Penn urged him. “Things still look good for you. If the police had something concrete, they would already have brought you in for questioning. If they do call about questioning you, refer them to me. I’ll try to arrange for it to take place in a law office downtown. I don’t have one, but I can borrow a friend’s.” He squeezed Waters’s knee. “You just keep cool.”
Waters nodded.
“Get some sleep if you can. Play with your kid. Bring her over to play with Annie.”
“I will.”
He shook hands with Penn and got out. The owner of the music store was standing in the display window, looking right at him. As Penn’s Audi pulled away, Waters waved, then got into the Land Cruiser and drove out of the lot. Home was only a few hundred yards away, but as he neared it, he felt suddenly sure that he would find the police waiting when he arrived. He closed his eyes and thanked God that Annelise was spending the night away from home, and would not have to see him led away in handcuffs.
The driveway was empty.
The house felt empty too. Without Ana clattering around and Rose clanking utensils in the kitchen, Linton Hill seemed like a museum.
“Lily?” he called.
No answer.
He went into the den and sat on the sofa. For once, the remote control was actually on the table beside him. He switched on the TV and clicked up to CNN. The local news out of Jackson always had murders to report, and he didn’t want to see anything about murder. The images on CNN weren’t much better, though, war casualties overseas. Wherever you went, death was news.
“I thought I heard you come in.”
Waters looked over his shoulder, and his mouth fell open. The woman standing in the doorway was his wife, but she looked as though she had stepped out of a time machine. Her shoulder-length blond hair had vanished. Now cut boyishly short, with only a few locks curling around the neck, it looked the way it had when Lily first moved back to Natchez, and was still in her athletic phase. Tight slacks, drop earrings, and a deep V-neck blouse made the transformation complete.
“Wow,” he said. “You cut your hair.”
She smiled. “I had them lighte
n it a bit too.”
“You look ten years younger.”
“Was I that bad? You look like you’re in shock.”
“Did you run again?”
Lily walked into the room and spun before him like a runway model. “Actually I slept most of the day. I was really tired. But after going to the salon, I felt better. What about you? You look exhausted.”
“Just worried,” he said, searching for some excuse. “The EPA won’t tell us a damn thing.”
“Screw the EPA.” Lily smiled again. “As soon as I start rubbing your shoulders, you’re going to forget all about those tree-hugging fascists.”
Waters couldn’t believe his ears. Lily hadn’t sounded this carefree in ages. She was wearing a little eyeliner and shadow too, he noticed. She hadn’t overdone it, but there was enough to give her an air of mystery.
She walked behind the sofa and said, “Turn off the news and put on some satellite music. Atmospheres or something.”
Waters fiddled with the remote, and soon the soothing sounds of a well-played acoustic guitar filled the room.
Lily laid her hands on his shoulders and began a soothing massage. She started with gentle pressure, but before long her fingers were digging into the muscle fibers of his neck, working out the tension that had been building there ever since he left Eve lying dead in the Eola Hotel.
“God, that feels good.”
“Don’t think,” she said. “Clear your mind.”
Her command was impossible to obey, but he tried. Lily thoroughly massaged his neck and scalp, then moved to his face. She worked the tension out of muscles he never knew he had: below his eyes, over the joint of his jawbone, below his nose, around his mouth. He jumped when her fingers slid into his mouth and began to rub his gums and upper palate, but it felt so good that he laid his head back and gave himself to it. When Lily flattened the pad of her thumb against his back teeth and pushed down, the sensation was amazing.
“Let go, baby,” she murmured. “Don’t fight it.”
The sensuality of her fingers inside his mouth aroused him. After a couple of minutes, she removed her wet fingers and slid them down into his shirt. His nipples constricted at her touch. She played there for a few moments, then leaned over him and slid both hands down to his lap.
