Savannah Blues

by Mary Kay Andrews

  I helped myself to a crab cake and some tomatoes. “James never told me in so many words. He’s a painfully private person.”

  I picked at my food, brooding over all the injustices in the world. From what Jonathan said, it was going to take heaven and earth to bring Lewis Hargreaves to justice. And in the meantime, he’d probably sell the Moses Weed cupboard and who knew what else from Beaulieu, and make a couple hundred thousand in the process.

  “This whole thing sucks,” I said finally, pushing away a crab cake that I’d picked to pieces with my fork.

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked. “Too much cilantro?”

  “It’s not the food,” I said. “It’s this whole deal that gripes my grits. Look at what’s happened here. No matter what we do on Monday, Lewis Hargreaves is still going to have his fancy shop and his zillion-dollar townhouse and his big fancy van. And I’ll still be an itinerant picker who drives a beat-up turquoise truck. People like Hargreaves don’t get arrested for crawling out a second-story window. They don’t get booked and finger-printed and have sweaty grubby hands patting them down. And they sure as hell don’t have to wear jail shoes.”

  “Jail shoes?” BeBe and Daniel said it together.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m lousy company tonight. Sorry to eat and run, but I think I’ll eat and run.”

  “No dessert?” BeBe asked, holding up a box of the Fudgsicles.

  “Not this time,” I said. “Talk to you tomorrow maybe.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Daniel volunteered.

  He held my hand as we walked out to my truck. It made me want to cry. Tal had never held hands with me after we got married.

  “You feeling all right?” Daniel asked, glancing over at me.

  “Just kind of blue,” I admitted. “It’s been a long day. I’ll get over it.”

  “Let me come home with you,” he said. “I won’t stay over. We could just sit on the sofa. Maybe listen to music or something. Hey. I’ve got it. I’ll give you a back rub. I give a killer back rub.”

  I shook my head. “Not tonight.”

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “I’ll even listen to show tunes if you like.”

  I bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It was just a little joke.”

  “Was that a crack about my uncle being gay?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I was just trying to cheer you up. Jeez, why are you being so sensitive all of a sudden?”

  “Do you have a problem with my uncle being gay?” I demanded.

  “No,” he said, stammering slightly. “I told you before, I hate all this family stuff. I’m not interested in that kind of thing.” He reached to pull me closer. “You and me. That’s all I’m interested in, Weezie. Everybody else can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

  “But it’s not just you and me,” I said sharply. “I’m part of a family, Daniel. A screwed-up, nutty family. The Foleys put the fun in dysfunctional. But as messed up as they are—as I am—I love them. And I know they love me too. Mostly.”

  “So?” He raised an eyebrow, suddenly tensed.

  “You’re part of a family too, in case you’ve forgotten,” I said. “But you won’t admit it. You won’t even talk about it. And that worries me.”

  “Why should it worry you? You think there’s something wrong with my family? What? You think the Stipaneks aren’t as good as the Talmadge Evans family? You afraid we’re a bunch of inbred freaks or something?”

  “Tal’s family?” I said, hooting. “They’re nothing. I never even took his name when I got married, in case you hadn’t noticed. I just think all those secrets of yours are really dangerous, Daniel. They eat at you.”

  His hand tightened on my shoulder.

  “What the hell are you talking about? What secrets?”

  I bit my lip. Suddenly I wished BeBe had never talked me into looking at Daniel’s personnel file. Maybe Daniel was right about one thing, the past was none of my business. But damn it, his past kept getting in our way.

  “I know about your mom,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  His blue eyes seemed to bore a hole through my forehead. It was as though he could see the wormy little secrets stored there.

  “What are you talking about? What do you know about my mother?”

  There was no graceful way to put it. I’d done something low and sneaky. It was impossible to put a nice spin to this. Just tell it, I told myself. Get it over with. Once it’s out in the open, you can talk it out.

  “I know your mother got involved with Hoyt Gambrell, back when you were just a kid. I know there was a terrible scandal. I know she married him, and he went to prison and she abandoned you and your brothers. I know that’s why you left Savannah. Because of her.”

  “Who have you been talking to?” His voice was calm, but his fingers were digging into the flesh of my shoulders.

  “Nobody,” I stammered. I’d been expecting fire, now he was killing me with coldness.

  “Tell me,” he said. “That was twenty years ago. Who told you about it?”

  I grabbed his hand. “You’re hurting me.”

  He loosened his grip, but his blue eyes were unwavering. “Who’s been talking to you about my family?”

  “Daniel, that’s beside the point,” I said pleadingly. “I don’t care what your mother did. I swear to God, I’m not judging you because of her.”

  “Who’s been digging around in my family’s dirt? I need to know.”

  “One of BeBe’s boyfriends told us,” I said finally. “It wasn’t his fault. I started it. I couldn’t figure out why you were so secretive about your family. It worried me, Daniel. So BeBe and I looked at your personnel file from Guale. We saw the name you’d put down as your next of kin. Paula Gambrell. I knew you didn’t have a sister, so I was wondering who she was. And BeBe said she’d heard that name before. So she called her boyfriend. He knows everything that ever happened in Savannah. He’d forgotten your mother’s name, but he told us about Hoyt Gambrell…and about what happened,” I added lamely.

  “And you two girls had a good giggle about it, didn’t you?” Daniel said. “That BeBe just loves juicy gossip. And you don’t mind it either, do you, Weezie?”

  “No,” I cried. “It wasn’t like that. I felt awful once I knew. BeBe felt bad too. We didn’t know, Daniel.”

  “You had no right,” he said.

  The street lamp at the curb spilled warm yellow light on Daniel’s face, but it was absolutely still. Stony. Unrecognizable. He stalked away, out of the pool of yellow light and into the gray-blue darkness.

  Chapter 61

  After Daniel left, I was in shock. He hadn’t yelled, hadn’t shouted. He’d simply walked away. I hardly remembered driving home. I rushed inside and tried calling BeBe’s, to see if he’d gone back there. I left messages on his answering machine at the beach house. I even considered, briefly, going after him. But the steeliness of his spine as he walked away into the darkness persuaded me that I might drive nonstop to hell in a handcart before Daniel Stipanek would come back to me that night.

  Finally, I slumped down on the sofa and did what all tough-minded contemporary women do these days when faced with what beauty-shop magazines call “life challenges.”

  I bawled like a damned baby. It felt good too. But after fifteen minutes of mewling and sniffing, I started getting thirsty. I was out in the kitchen, making myself a cup of herbal tea, when I heard the front door creak open.

  I sucked in my breath. He’d come back. In an instant I scrubbed my red puffy face with a wet dish towel and finger-combed my tear-matted hair back into some semblance of order. Not wanting to seem too eager to make up, I kept my clothes on, although I will admit to having unzipped my black Emma Peel top just the eensiest bit in an attempt to look somewhere this side of provocative.

  “Daniel?” I called nonchalantly.

  From the front of the house I heard Jethro whine. Not bark. Just whine.
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br />   “No baby, it’s me.”

  I dropped the tea tin into the sink and whirled around. Tal stood in the kitchen doorway, stooping because he was too tall to fit completely under the arched door frame.

  For a minute, my mind froze. And then it thawed, fast.

  “Get out,” I told him.

  “Daniel?” he said, slurring it, making it sound like a nasty word, like phlegm or uvula. “Is that your fry cook’s name?”

  The cordless phone was mounted on the kitchen wall. I snatched it up and held it out like a weapon. “Get out or I’ll call the cops. I mean it, Tal. I’m not in the mood for any of your shit tonight. Or any other night.”

  “Oh baby,” he said, taking a step closer. “Bet you were in the mood for Daniel though, weren’t you?”

  “Go away, Tal,” I said. “You’re drunk and you’re disgusting. And from now on, stay away from me. I don’t want any more surprise visits, or any messages on my answering machine, or any more flowers. I just want you out of my life. Forever.”

  He took a step forward and stroked my face. I cringed and batted his hand away.

  “Weezie,” he whispered, his breath laced with Scotch. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I mean it,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head like a dog trying to shed a flea. “You’re confused. All this mess with Caroline, it’s had you upset. But that’s all over. Did you hear? They’ve arrested Diane Mayhew. She killed Caroline. Remember Diane? She and Phipps came here for dinner one night. You were madder than a wet hen, because the silly bitch wouldn’t eat your cooking.”

  “Go away. Now.” My voice sounded eerily calm, but I could feel my knees buckling. I picked up the phone to call 911. Time to send for reinforcements.

  “No!” Tal slapped my face with the broad of his palm, sending the phone flying to the floor, where the cheap plastic shattered on impact.

  For a moment, I was blinded by the pain. Tears streamed down my face as I clutched both hands to my bruised cheek.

  “Weezie,” Tal crooned, pulling me to his chest. “I’m sorry, baby. I never meant to hurt you. Damn, Weezie. Why’d you make me do that?”

  I was sobbing, gasping for air, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Good old gutless Tal Evans had just whaled the tar out of me. And now he was hugging me and blaming me for what had just happened.

  “Let me go,” I cried, trying to push him away. “Let me go, Tal.”

  He folded his arms tighter around my back, crushing me to him.

  “Shh,” he whispered, stroking my hair. “Be still now. Just be still.”

  “Tal,” I whimpered. “You’re hurting me. Please let go.”

  “Now you just be still and listen,” he continued, his grip tightening. “That’s the problem with you, Weezie. You never wanted to listen.”

  “I’m listening now,” I said. I felt a warm trickle from my nose. Blood. “Really, Tal. I’m listening.”

  “Good,” he said, and he actually kissed the top of my head, like a father rewarding a recalcitrant kid for good behavior.

  “That guy. Daniel. Have you been sleeping with him, Weezie? Have you?” He looked down at me, his face stern. “You don’t even know the guy, and you’re prancing around over here half-naked with him. That isn’t like you.”

  “I know,” I managed to say. What was going on here? My mind reeled with the possibilities. Tal was drunk. He was crazy. His handprint was on my cheek. Men from Mars had invaded his pants and commandeered his penis, transplanting it into his brain. Whatever the cause, he was really giving me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. If I ever got away from him, I vowed, right before I had him locked up I was going to kick the living shit out of Tal Evans.

  “These women,” Tal was saying. “My mother was right. There’s no shame. No morals among young women anymore. Running around, acting like common street whores. There’s no decency anymore.”

  Could this be happening? Was my faithless, philandering ex-husband really giving me a lecture on morals? Maybe I was the one who was crazy. Maybe that one-time experiment with blotter acid back in junior high was giving me the bad trip of a lifetime.

  Holy jeez. If I ever got out of this, right after I kicked the shit out of Tal, I was going to start my own antidrug crusade. “Hey kids, just say no. In fact, say hell no.”

  “My mother was wrong about Caroline, though.” Tal sounded absolutely lucid. “Mother was crazy about Caroline. That’s why she gave me Great-grandmother’s diamond ring. To give to Caroline. Mother never liked you, Weezie. She thought you were trashy. Caroline had her fooled. She had everybody fooled. Even me, for a while. She acted so refined. So elegant. The fucking slut. Walking around in a two-thousand-dollar dress, wearing my great-grandmother’s ring, and underneath that silk dress, she was naked.”

  I felt myself freeze.

  I looked up at Tal. He nodded, his smile twisted. “Shocked you, didn’t I?”

  “What are you talking about?” My mouth was dry.

  “Caroline. The night she went to meet Phipps Mayhew. Out at Beaulieu. That was part of her little game with him. No panties. Classy, huh? She died wearing a two-carat diamond, and no panties.”

  “How did you know that?” The blood was trickling down into the corner of my mouth. I tasted it with the tip of my tongue. It was hot and salty. Like Caroline DeSantos. But how did Tal know what Caroline wasn’t wearing the night she was killed? Jonathan said the cops had kept it a secret. Only the killer knew. And Diane Mayhew was the killer. Wasn’t she?

  “They had phone sex,” Tal was saying. “Caroline and Phipps. Revolting. Diane played me a tape recording she made of it. The silly bitch tapped the kids’ phones, but instead of the kids, she caught the old goat.”

  He laughed. Tal always did love his own jokes.

  “You and Diane?” Maybe I had a concussion.

  “Diane came to my office one day. Told me about what was going on between Phipps and Caroline. She demanded that I fire Caroline.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He smiled again. “Phipps Mayhew was the firm’s biggest client. Ever. With a commission like that, it was only a matter of time before we started getting other big commercial projects. Sewage treatment plants, schools. Hospitals. And all because of Caroline. Because she couldn’t keep her legs together. If I fired Caroline, she would have gone to another firm. Taken the Plant Mullinax project with her. There was no way. No fuckin’ way. And I told Diane that too.”

  He stroked my hair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a glint of gold. His wedding band. The one I’d given him. Tal’s touch was deceptively gentle. It triggered what shrinks call a sense memory. A long time ago, I had lain in bed with this man, the two of us, naked, intertwined. The same touch.

  “You and Diane. Together. The two of you killed Caroline.”

  His hand slid down to my shoulder again. He sighed.

  “Diane did it. All by herself. She didn’t need any help from me.”

  “You set it up, didn’t you?”

  “No.” He said it carelessly. “I told Diane she was crazy. It was too risky. But she wouldn’t listen. What could I do? How could I stop her? I had a feeling the night I followed Caroline out to Beaulieu. And I was right.”

  “You were there?”

  “I didn’t go into the house,” Tal said. “I heard the shots. And I saw Diane drive away. There was nothing I could do for Caroline by then.”

  “But you knew,” I said. “You knew she did it. The police thought I killed Caroline. They arrested me. Put me in jail. If it hadn’t been for James…. They would have tried me for murder.”

  “Diane would have confessed. Eventually.” He frowned and shook his finger in my face. The man really needed killing. “It was your own fault, Weezie. You had to go snooping around out there at Beaulieu. Caroline told me about the way you showed up at the memorial service for Miss Anna Ruby. Shameless, really.”

  “Me?” It came out as a squeak.
“I’m shameless?”

  “You’ve changed,” he said, frowning. “Did you do it, Weezie?” He held me at arm’s length, and his fingertips dug into my shoulder blades.

  “Did I, what?”

  “Did. You. Fuck. Him.” Each word was a statement.

  “No.” I said it calmly. I rocked back a little on my heels, brought my knee up with every ounce of strength I had, and issued Tal a direct hit in the balls.

  He howled and doubled over from the pain. It was all I needed. I started running toward the front door. I had to get away. But over the din of his screams I heard a voice calling me.

  “Weezie? Eloise?”

  I stopped in my tracks. It was my mother.

  “Mama?” I ran back toward the kitchen. She never came here. She’d said she couldn’t stand seeing me living in a garage.

  But she was here now. My mama was standing in my kitchen doorway, clutching a white-and-blue Corning Ware casserole dish in both hands. Tal was rolling around on the kitchen floor, howling like a scalded dog, both hands cupped over his privates.

  “Weezie? I brought you one of my tuna noodle casseroles. What on earth is going on here? What’s wrong with Tal?”

  Mama looked nice. She’d had her hair colored and combed out, and she was wearing lipstick and a little pair of pearl earrings. She was clear-eyed and sassy. It was my old mama.

  She put one finger under my chin. She sucked in her breath. “My Lord, child, you’re bleeding. And you’ve got a big old knot raising up under your eye.”

  “It was Tal. He hit me. We’ve got to get out of here. He’s dangerous, Mama. He helped Diane Mayhew kill Caroline.” I tugged at her arm. “Come on, Mama. Let’s call the police.”

  She pulled away from me. Looked down at Tal, her eyes narrowing. He was struggling to his feet.

  “Marian,” he gasped, pulling himself up by grasping one of the cabinet doors. “Thank goodness you’re here. Weezie’s not herself. We need to get her help. Psychological counseling.”

  “You hit Weezie?” Mama’s voice made shivers run down my spine. I looked up and saw Jethro standing in the doorway. He was positively cowering at the sight of my mama.