by P. J. Vernon
She knew about his planned run for congress. Maybe she worked at Cooper and Waters, too? What sort of information could Annie have? Worry over my last question disappeared in the wake of intense relief.
I leapt to my suitcase, next to Paul’s, still unpacked from my flight days earlier. So much had happened since then, but there wasn’t time to dwell. I had to get dressed and ready. And then I had to find a way to get to the restaurant on Oleander Avenue.
* * *
“I don’t like the idea of this,” Charlotte announced as she slid my cell phone back across the kitchen counter. She’d just finished listening to Annie’s voicemail. I picked it up and returned it to my bag next to my laptop.
“I haven’t had a drop to drink in four days now. Four days. And you know it’s true. You’ve been with me every second of each one.”
“It’s not that,” she said, picking at her nails. “It’s not just that.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, lowering my voice. Mamma’s footsteps echoed upstairs, and if she heard us arguing and became involved, my plan was shot. “You heard her. She has important information regarding Paul, and she told me to tell no one. To come alone. I wouldn’t have said a word to you if I didn’t need—”
“Didn’t need a car?” Charlotte crossed her arms.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” I replied, folding my own.
“It’s exactly what you meant. You ticked through a list of all the people at Piper Point with available cars and decided I’m the weakest link. The one who’d bend under pressure.”
“That’s not it at all, Charlotte, I—”
“Take a cab,” she said tersely, casting her gaze over my shoulder to avoid mine.
I strained to whisper now. With Mamma around, this couldn’t turn into a debate. It was far too important. “A taxi will leave a record and a witness, and you heard her yourself: The information she has could cost Paul the election.”
“Paul seems to be doing a fine job of sinking his own chances with this mess.” Her eyes darted to the television in the den, and I was certain Bethany’s news report was replaying in her mind.
“Charlotte.” My eyes widened. “I need information. Any information. Annie has some, and she’s willing to share it with me. I have to play by her rules. I’m struggling here, I really am. I haven’t had an ounce to drink. At a time like this—”
“The chance, you mean.”
I knotted my brow. “What?”
“You haven’t had the chance to drink at a time like this,” she sighed.
My phone indicated it was half past noon already. Time slipped away with every moment we wasted talking in circles. “A few hours. I need it for a few hours.”
“I’ll drop you off a couple blocks away. You can walk.”
Why wasn’t Charlotte understanding? When her relationship with Will was collapsing, she’d called me almost daily, and unless I was worried about slurring, I always answered. I was a sounding board for her anger. But then again, was I really? How often had my drinking sent Charlotte’s needs to voicemail? More than I cared to remember. Did she resent me for it now?
I tried my best to remain calm, but desperation edged its way into my voice. “She said to tell no one. Not the detective. Not my family. What if she sees me get out of the car with you in it? We have no idea where she’ll be coming from or if she’ll even be on time. I can’t risk it. You heard Annie’s first voicemail. Something frightened her from leaving her contact information. I’m lucky she reached out again. If we spook her now, what will I have? What will I do then?”
Charlotte unclenched her jaw and exhaled. She was starting to come around. I always knew when I’d begun to gain ground with her. “I said it wasn’t just that. The car, I mean.”
“What else?” I asked.
She appeared uneasy, shifting her weight from one heel to the other and back again. “I understand this woman claims to have sensitive information, but Nina explicitly said to notify her the moment Annie made contact again. Spooked or not, she predicted this would happen. I don’t like the idea of keeping this from her. She knows more about handling these things than you and I. She’s a detective for Christ’s sake.”
I hadn’t made up my mind on how much I trusted Nina yet. How could I when she’d delayed on coming to us over the rental? And with her family’s history with ours. Besides, I wasn’t going to keep her out. I just wanted to talk to Annie before she did. I didn’t know who the woman was, and I didn’t know what she knew. Both things I’d prefer to learn before Nina.
“We can’t tell her just yet,” I answered. “Not until after I’ve met Annie. I need to put a face to her name. I need to speak with her. To hear what she has to tell me.” Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes.
I pressed on. “I’ve had nothing to cling to these past few days. No information, no means of understanding why Paul took off. Sure, there was the fight at the bar over Jacob, but this is something else. To vanish, to risk complications with work and his congressional bid? Something happened to him. We have problems, but this woman has answers I need before I can even think about Paul and me.”
“I know, but what you said isn’t true.” Her eyes at last returned to mine.
“What do you mean?”
“That you’ve had nothing to cling to,” she replied. “That’s not true. You’ve had me, Gray. You’ve had your sister.”
I forced a grin. Maybe she wasn’t resentful. “Then don’t take that away from me. A few hours, Charlotte. A few hours and its right back home. Back to Piper Point.”
“Okay,” Charlotte finally relented. The worry deep in her eyes overshadowed the tiny smile she sported. “A few hours, and Mamma can’t know. I’ll think of some way to hide it from her.”
15
Nina
“I’ve got Ms. Miles waiting for you in the Fish Bowl,” the officer at reception informed me.
“Thank you,” I answered, hanging up my desk phone. I took a deep breath before gathering my files and heading to the glassed-in conference room for the second time in the Godfrey-King case. This could go any number of ways, but fun wasn’t one of them.
“Hello, Ms. Miles.” I smiled as the door clicked shut behind me.
“Nina,” Frances said through a pearly grin. She sported a white sundress covered in a pattern of stitched crimson poinsettias. Cocking her head to one side like a playful kitten, she added, “And please, call me Frances. We’re old friends, after all.”
“Sure,” I replied. “Frances.”
She may have changed a thing or two over the years, but the look she wore remained the same. Vapid. Filled with superiority. Even seated, she somehow managed to look down on me.
“It’s just awful what happened. With Paul Godfrey, that is. It’s been all over the news the past few days. Gray must be a wreck. I’ve left a few voicemails with their maid Laura, I think—but I haven’t heard back.”
“Cora,” I said, taking my seat across the table from her.
She arched her brow. “I’m sorry?”
“Cora. Their housekeeper’s name is Cora. You called her Laura.”
“Oh.” She pursed her lips. “Well, you know more than I do about the family, it seems. Tell me then, how’s Gray holding up?”
“I brought you here to speak about the evening of Christmas Eve and the early hours of Christmas morning,” I said, thumbing through the papers I’d laid out on the table. “Something you certainly know more about than I, since you were there. With Paul and Gray and a few others, if I’m not mistaken?”
“I was,” she answered. Her face turned quizzical. “Do you think something bad happened to Paul? Like foul play?”
I found the blank legal pad I’d been searching for and uncapped my pen. “Ms. Miles … Frances, I’d like you to tell me what happened that evening. Start to finish.”
She hesitated, clearly not used to having her questions go unanswered. Certainly, not by me. “Well, let’s see,” she started. “I ran int
o them at church—”
“Blessed Lamb Baptist, correct?”
“Correct,” she replied. “I wasn’t expecting to see them. Neither of those girls comes home very often. It was quite a surprise.”
I’d begun to make notes. “A good surprise?”
The question seemed to offend her. “Of course. We were all very close friends growing up.”
“But you’d drifted apart?”
“I suppose you could say so. But I think it’s more like Gray and her sister drifted away from Elizabeth—me and the rest of the town. Even Joanna King talked in church about how she’d raised daughters only to have them run off someplace else. At least Charlotte stayed in a Carolina, even if it was the wrong one. Gray went all the way to Washington.”
I tried my best to retain a smile. “So, it was a reunion at church?”
“Oh yes. I promptly invited them out to Ruby’s. You know how Ruby’s is the nights before Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone’s there. You can see all your old friends at once without much planning ahead.” She’d uncrossed her legs and retrieved her handbag from the floor.
I followed her hands with my eyes. “I’m aware. What happened next?”
“Let’s see, I skipped out of the service during the closing hymn to beat traffic to the bar. I mingled for twenty minutes or so before I spotted Gray and Charlotte and Paul walk in through the front door.” She rifled through the contents of her purse. Hunting for makeup, I supposed.
“Had you been drinking by then?”
“Of course.” She laughed, her eyes meeting mine. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“And what about the others?”
She returned to rummaging. “Not yet. In fact, I bought the first round.”
“What did everyone order?”
Just as my questions appeared to exhaust her, she finally located the compact she’d been searching for. Retouching her cheeks seemed to renew her interest. “Paul asked for a water. Charlotte and Gray both ordered gin and tonics.” She paused. “Come to think of it, Gray asked me to make hers a double. She whispered it to me like she didn’t want Paul to hear. Which makes sense.”
Her last words struck me. “Why does that make sense?”
The compact snapped closed in her hands like a pricey plastic clam. “I’ve heard rumors,” she answered, lowering her voice. “Rumors Gray might have a drinking problem.”
My last few encounters with Gray replayed in my mind. The trembling. The wet brow and flushed cheeks. But her husband was missing. That could more than account for anything unsettling about her demeanor. However, I also recalled Charlotte’s hesitation on the topic of Gray’s drinking. Charlotte’s body language had suggested something beneath the surface.
“How did you hear these rumors?”
Frances offered a wry grin. “In Elizabeth, gossip always trickles back in from the outside world. I’m not exactly sure how I heard—maybe a mutual friend had gone to visit Gray or bumped into her at a restaurant in D.C. or something—but it fits with Gray’s personality.”
“Her personality?”
Frances spoke matter-of-factly. “Everybody goes through that phase. When all the sudden you don’t need your parents out of town to party. We all liked our liquor back then, but Gray liked hers a lot more. When the rest of us began to calm down around senior year, she showed no sign of slowing. I caught her drinking alone more than once myself.”
Gray Godfrey struggling with substance abuse? That was something new to me. My next question would be a loaded one. I knew why people drank. They drank to get drunk. To think they needed a reason beyond that was a useless exercise. But Frances might not agree, and whatever she filled in the blanks with could be insightful.
“Assuming it’s true, any idea why she might drink?” I asked.
The rain that had become so commonplace the past week resumed, spraying large drops on the window behind Frances. “I suppose there’s the poor-little-rich-girl cliché, but I don’t think that holds much water. Her mother might’ve been a bit cold and her father often gone, but she always had Charlotte.” She hesitated, and I could see the spot of joy her next sentence brought no matter how hard she tried to squash it. “And she had your aunt, of course. Matilda?”
“Tilda. We call her Tilda.” I let the slight roll off my back. Frances would get no satisfaction from seeing me react. “Why do you think she drinks, then?”
The smile fell from her face. “I think Paul drives her to drink. I don’t know him well, but he seems awfully controlling. Jealous, too. He proved it that night.”
“Yes, I was going to get to that. What happened next?”
Frances answered, “Gray left to use the bathroom. Innocent enough, except she didn’t come back. Everyone else was distracted with Paul’s conversation. Something political and dull. But I saw where she really went. She went for another drink and took a couple shots while she waited.”
I flipped a page in my notepad and continued writing. “With a man named Jonas Hatfield?”
“I have no idea who he was. Run-of-the-mill white trash, it looked like,” she replied. “In any case, Jacob excused himself to go to the bathroom, but he didn’t go either. He went sniffing for Gray. Paul was oblivious. At first.”
“I know Gray and Mr. Wilcox share a history together. What’s your understanding of it?”
Frances chuckled, “‘History’ is an understatement. She lost her virginity to him at thirteen.”
“That’s awfully young,” I remarked. Thirteen years old was more than awfully young; it was statutory. And unfortunate. Despite my efforts to suppress it, a drop of sadness sent tiny ripples through me. Beneath the line where I’d scrawled the words Possible alcoholism, I wrote: sexually active at young age.
“Like I said, Gray’s personality.” Frances leaned back in her chair.
“I understand they had an encounter that night?”
Frances’ smile and the way she swiveled her high-heel under her ankle made it seem like she was enjoying this. Like she got off on knocking Gray down a peg with lurid details. “On the dance floor. Gray was drunk by then, and if history’s any guide, so was Jacob. They made out like a couple barn cats in heat.”
“Mr. Wilcox also has a drinking problem?”
“Jacob has an everything problem. Gray’s not the only girl in town Jacob’s fucked,” she answered through curved lips. “He may have his issues, but he’s the best cut of meat in Elizabeth. Personal opinion, of course.”
“Of course.” I grinned. “What sort of problems does he have?”
She rattled off her answers, rolling her eyes like she’d personally heard excuses for each one. I didn’t doubt she had. “You name it, he’s got it. Money problems. Beer problems. Pot problems when the beer’s run out. Lives in a carriage house apartment behind his grandmother’s place. On unemployment more often than not. And then there’s the jealousy.”
That word again. “Jealousy?”
She leaned forward on the table. “I guess it’d make Paul’s seem tiny by comparison. Once you’re his, you’re his. It might fall apart, and he might move on, but if he comes calling, you better answer.”
“You were his?” I leaned forward, too. There was barely more than a foot between our noses now.
“Yes,” she answered flatly.
“And if he came calling, would you answer?”
She sat up in her seat, breaking our stare. “Like I said, best cut of meat in Elizabeth. But Gray was the original. And she’ll always be the one that got away. Not that he ever had much to offer her.”
“And when Paul realized both Gray and Mr. Wilcox were missing together?”
“You mean when I turned Paul’s head to the two of them?” Each word she spoke was dotted with ire. “There was a ruckus on the dance floor the next room over. I couldn’t see much, but Gray was so hammered that Paul had to practically drag her out when it was over.”
I asked my next question more forcefully. “Was there a confront
ation between the two men? A physical altercation?”
“I told you I couldn’t see much, but I imagine there would’ve been,” she replied, picking at the hem of her sundress. “Someone important like Paul and someone stubborn like Jacob? Talk about an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.”
I sat my pen on the table and closed my notepad. Sammie waited for me on the far side of the conference room door. “Imaginative metaphor. Except, now someone’s missing.”
Frances smirked. “Then maybe there’s no such thing as unstoppable or immovable.”
16
Gray
“Like riding a bike,” I whispered as I made my way to Charlotte’s car. Hattie the Cattie sprawled her aging body on the gravel by the passenger-side door. She purred as I reached down to run my fingers through her tangled black and white fur.
“Hey, girlie,” I cooed. “You’ve got to move, so I can leave.” She meowed as I picked her up and sat her in the crabgrass a few yards from the car. I’d decided to bring her home with me when all this was over. Let her live out the few days she had left in the comfort of our townhouse. I didn’t give a damn what Paul would have to say about it.
I pulled the driver’s door closed. Charlotte’s Benz might as well have been a rocket ship, the way the dashboard lit up. Had it really been so long since I’d driven? Folks knew better than to ask me for a lift anywhere. Even if Paul was certain I was sober, he didn’t trust me stay that way.
I slung my bag, weighed down with my laptop—just in case—on the passenger seat. I checked the side-view mirror once more for Hattie. She sat perched and alert in the yard, a safe distance away.
Exhaling, I pulled the gearshift into drive. As Piper Point’s oppressive pillars retreated in the rearview mirror, an emptiness grew inside me. The joy from leaving Piper Point was nowhere to be found, because I wasn’t leaving for good. In a few hours, the house would grow large again. Swallowing me up on all sides.
I turned left onto Atalaya Drive. A high-pitched pinging rang out. My seatbelt. Of course. I pulled it across my chest and clicked it into place.
