Follow the money.
She was a smart lady; young, special, and smart. What a combination. With a little luck, she’d go far and do a lot, as long as life didn’t beat the hell out of her.
God, I sound old.
While I liked Margot Horowitz and was almost relieved to honestly believe she hadn’t killed R. J. Reed, this didn’t put me any closer to finding out who had. And while there was clearly a money trail, where did it start? And how did it come to end in the death of R. J. Reed?
I left Margot Horowitz in the parking lot just below Radnor Lake as the sun was setting behind a row of trees. The day was nearly at an end, but I wasn’t ready to call it quits. I checked my watch; the worst of the rush hour should be over.
The air was cool, dry as I turned right on Granny White Pike and headed back toward the freeway. I popped onto I-65 and made it back downtown in about twenty minutes. The center had pretty well cleared out by the time I found a parking space in front of the main branch of the public library. I’d taken a chance and gotten lucky: the library was open until nine.
Inside the business-reference section, I sat down in front of a computer terminal and typed in the words Spearhead Press. In a couple of seconds, I had a long list of newspaper articles and dates. I routed that list to a printer, then typed in the names of the two principals, Karl Sykes and Travis Webber, and ran a printout of those articles. Finally, just for grins, I typed in R. J. Reed’s name and got a list of a dozen or so local newspaper articles. I punched the key to print those, and while they were printing, I got ten dollars worth of quarters out of the dollar-bill changer next to the Xerox machines. It was going to be a long night.
There wasn’t time to read the articles. I threaded in microfilm, reeled as quickly as possible to the right day, found each article, then dropped a quarter into the slot to print it. It was monkey work; a high school intern could have done it. Unfortunately, I had neither the intern nor the monkey.
I tried to keep them in chronological order, but invariably the growing pile of paper got scrambled. What the hell, I’d straighten them out later. Truth is, it felt good to be working again, to be in that mode where focus becomes so clear, so intense, that one finally becomes unconscious even of time passing.
I was threading the last reel through the pulleys when a thin woman in glasses tapped me on the shoulder and announced the library was closing in fifteen minutes. I’d dropped almost three hours without realizing it. I also noticed for the first time that I was getting kind of hungry as well.
I put the last microfilm box back on the cart for reshelving, gathered up the three-quarter-inch stack of paper, and headed for the front door. It was nine o’clock, and it had been a long day. A little dinner, perhaps a beer; yeah, that’d work.
I stepped into a phone booth in the lobby by the checkout desk and dialed Marsha’s number. She answered the phone half asleep, told me she was already in bed and about ready to drop off. I said good night, told her I’d call her in the morning, and was privately relieved that she didn’t want company. Maybe I should’ve taken that as a warning sign, but I was too glad to have the rest of the night to myself.
I decided to leave the car where it was; I was only a couple of blocks from my office and it was a pleasant enough night to walk. I strolled up the hill in front of the library and around the corner to the Huddle House, a small twenty-four-hour diner attached to a downtown motel that always struck me as a little seedy. I was in the mood for seedy, though, and felt right at home. The place was practically empty, so I took a booth to myself and ordered a cup of decaf and some bacon and eggs. The waitress had a tattooed rose on one hand and a man’s name—P-A-U-L—across the knuckles of the other. She poured the coffee, gave me a dentally challenged smile, then walked over behind the cash register and lit a cigarette while waiting for the cook to finish my order.
I spread the photocopied articles in front of me and decided to start by cross-referencing the duplicates. Once I had the extra copies off to one side, I divided everything up by subject and put them in chronological order. I felt very organized and virtuous and even a bit obsessive-compulsive. Okay, I reasoned, you can’t force order on to your life but you can impose order on your stuff.
I had three separate piles by then: one of articles on R. J. Reed and Life’s Little Maintenance Manual, one that included articles about the publishing house and its two founders, and a third of duplicates.
R.J.’s pile came first. The very first article published in the local media about R. J. Reed was a short little squib on the book page of the afternoon paper. For a town its size, Nashville has the reputation of being a “good book town,” and both the dailies carry weekly book pages. The afternoon paper, though, is much better at covering local and unknown writers, so I wasn’t terribly surprised to find R.J.’s first piece there.
It was a short review and went pretty easy on him, I thought. The reviewer quoted from one or two of the less saccharine parts of the book and called it a great gift idea.
Not exactly the sort of juice that gets the attention of the Pulitzer Prize committee …
That was the only piece on R.J. for almost six months. I surmised this was the time when he was driving around the country hustling every bookstore clerk, wholesaler, and drugstore paperback buyer in the country. Then, about six months after publication, there was a short notice in the weekend section about R.J.’s upcoming appearance on Oprah. Apparently, even the TV columnist didn’t pick up on what that meant Two weeks later, though, R.J. was lead feature in the “Living” section, and the story of his breathtaking rise was impressive.
I scanned the feature, having heard most of this stuff from Victoria and Margot. Nothing new, nothing revealing, just the same old PR crap: R. J. Reed as the emerging nexus of New Age philosophy and family values.
“Yuk,” I muttered as the waitress brought the plate of bacon and eggs and slid them in front of me.
“C’mon, you haven’t even tried ’em yet.”
I looked up, smiled. “Not a comment on the food. It’s the reading material.”
“Yeah?” she asked, snapping her chewing gum as she talked. “Whatcha reading?”
“Articles about a guy who wrote a book.”
“Yeah? Which one?”
Okay, I thought, I can play along with her.
“Book called Life’s Little Maintenance Manual.”
“Oh!” she squealed. “You know, I never read books. I mean, never! But my sister bought me a copy of that book and I swear, it changed my life! Really!”
“I believe you,” I said. “Honest.”
“Swear to God!”
“I believe you.”
“You know, the guy that wrote that? He’s from Nashville!”
“Yeah, I was just reading about him.”
“God, one of these days I’d just love to meet him. He’s so handsome and so wise!”
“Yeah, well,” I offered, “maybe one of these days you will.”
She turned, walked away still muttering about how much Life’s Little Maintenance Manual meant to her. It had changed her life, taught her to live again, given her new insights into what a meaningful life meant.
Is it just me, or has the entire world been dumbed down to imbecility?
Suddenly I was very depressed.
A half hour later, I’d managed to scarf down the greasy bacon and eggs and thin coffee. I walked over to Seventh Avenue and down the darkened streets to my office. The air was heavier, wetter, with the threat of one of those early spring rains that are sometimes lazy, moody drizzles and sometimes full-scale gully washers.
I stepped over a sleeping transient in the entranceway to my building and unlocked the front door, locked it back behind me, then went down the darkened hallway. The building super had taken to turning off all the hall lights at night in a desperate effort to cut expenses enough to stay in business. I felt my way down the hallway, then by memory up the flight of stairs. On the second floor, the dim light of an exit sign provided enough light to keep me from tripping over my own feet.
The second floor was empty. I thought maybe Slim and Ray would be up there, this being the time of night when they often got the most work done, but they must have been off playing a gig somewhere or else down on Second Avenue swilling beers and trying to pick up the tourist babes.
I unlocked my office door and flicked on the light. It had been a long day, like a year had passed since I was in here talking to Victoria about her husband. Before leaving, I’d decided to hell with telephones and unplugged mine. The answering machine sat there blessedly mute. I didn’t expect any calls at this time of night but figured that I really should have the answering machine on duty during office hours. Somebody might even call with a paying gig, like I had time to deal with anything else. Right …
I cleared away as much empty space on my desk as I could find and spread the photocopied articles out in front of me once again. This time, no tattooed gushing waitresses would interrupt my train of thought. I quickly scanned the articles on R.J. There was nothing new up until the last one, which was dated two months ago. It announced the signing of R.J.’s deal for a sequel to the book, with an unnamed source confirming what Margot Horowitz had told me: four million bucks for a book it probably took him a couple of weeks to write.
“Jeez,” I whispered. “I’m in the wrong business.”
It’s like playing the lottery, I thought. You throw these things out there and if the public bites, then it’s a license to print money. Or maybe it’s like those machines that I used to play at the state fair when I was a kid, one of those glass cages with all the stuffed animals in the bottom and a metal claw at the top suspended by a cable, and you put in a quarter and turn the wheels and the claw drops and grabs your prize.
Only instead of little stuffed animals, it’s a gagillion books in the bottom of the glass cage and the publishers and the reading public pumping in the quarters and dropping the claw. And if the claw grabs you, then you’re the prize.
The Claw, by God, grabbed R. J. Reed, grabbed him and took him to the top and dropped him down the chute and made him the prize.
I filed the articles on R.J. in a separate pile. I felt like I knew him about as well as I ever could without having met him, or at least meeting him when he could acknowledge the introduction. I turned to the ones on Spearhead Press, feeling like the effort was probably futile but not knowing what the hell else to do.
The early articles on Spearhead Press and the two men who founded it predated the publication of Life’s Little Maintenance Manual. The initial article announced the publication of their first book, a history of evangelical fundamentalism during the Civil War. I didn’t know there had been any evangelical fundamentalism during the Civil War. The book was entitled Witnessing to War and was written by a retired professor from the American Baptist Bible College. Published in hardcover, it sold for thirty-five dollars and was nearly eight hundred pages long.
“Jesus,” I muttered, “bet they sold the hell out of that one.”
There was a little background on the company in that first article, and later articles filled in the missing pieces. Sykes and Webber had come to Spearhead Press from two different directions. Sykes had worked in Chicago for an academic press that went under in the early Eighties. Webber had worked for one of those TV ministries and left that field about the same time. None of the articles mentioned why he’d left that career. They’d both wound up in Nashville working for a religious marketing company, a distributor of hymnals and Sunday school manuals, leaflets and prayer books.
In the mid-Eighties, after some success with the company, both Sykes and Webber lost their jobs. Again, no mention of why, although the mid-Eighties marked the beginning of the corporate downsizing bloodbaths. No jobs were safe, white-collar middle-management jobs especially. They both got caught in a corporate tailspin and plowed a big one.
At least that was my guess. I made plenty of notes on the progress of the company, which was traced in a series of articles in the business sections of both dailies. When the company hit with Life’s Little Maintenance Manual, the articles got bigger, flashier, and were accompanied by color photos of Sykes and Webber that sometimes were bigger than the articles themselves.
Last year, Webber’s new home in Brentwood was added to the annual mansion tour, a fund-raising event for the cancer society. Sykes had built a new home in Mount Juliet, a suburb out I-40 toward Knoxville. A reproduction of Twelve Oaks from Gone with the Wind, it sat in the middle of almost fifty acres in Wilson County.
Sykes and Webber had come a long way. The company had started in the basement of Sykes’s rented home off Lebanon Road. And as Victoria Reed had told me, and I’d seen for myself, they now owned their corporate headquarters building in Maryland Farms.
The Claw had grabbed them, too.
I finished up my notes and collected the highlighted articles into a file folder. It was well after eleven, and I suddenly felt exhausted and a bit apprehensive at having to walk four or five blocks this late at night to get to my car. I gathered everything up and locked my office behind me. I had solid information now, enough background to get started. Tomorrow, the real digging would begin.
I took the stairs slowly as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. My hand ran down the dust-covered handrail. Down the hall, I heard a scurrying noise.
“Great,” I said out loud, more to hear my own voice than anything else. “Rodentia. I’ve got to find another office.”
I made my way down the hall and stopped at the glass doors leading out onto Seventh Avenue. A light drizzle fell through the sulfurous amber glow of the streetlights. Whoever had been sleeping in the entrance foyer had wandered off to another sidewalk motel.
What bothered me was the dark sedan parked out front, across Seventh, in a No Parking zone on the street next to a parking lot. It was big, blocky, like an old LTD or a Crown Victoria.
I stopped, studied the car for a moment. The windows were smoked, nearly opaque. I hid in the shadows for a second, then decided I was being silly. I was too tired for this crap.
The key turned in the lock and the heavy plate-glass door went outward as I pushed it. I stepped out, locked the door behind me. As I turned back toward the street, the driver’s-side window lowered smoothly, like an electric window. I tucked my head and held the folders in close to me, then started up the street.
“Hello, Harry,” a voice called from within the sedan.
I stopped.
“How ya doin’?”
I turned, my stomach tightening. I squinted, tried to see inside the car.
“Who is that?” I said, my voice low, almost as if I didn’t want anyone to overhear me.
“A friend. Step over.”
I looked both ways, up and down Seventh Avenue. The streets were deserted, deadly quiet, with only the slight misting sound of a falling sprinkle. Cautiously, I stepped into the street, walked about halfway across Seventh, stopped. If whoever inside was coming out after me, I had half a running start on them.
If they had something more effective in mind, like a pistol, I was history anyway.
“Who is it?” I said.
The dome light flicked on inside the car and a hulking man turned to me from behind the wheel.
It was Lieutenant Howard Spellman, head of the Metro police department’s homicide squad. I sighed, relieved, and stepped over to the car.
“Howard, you scared the shit out of me.”
“How are you, Harry?” His voice was low, careful.
“About ten years older than I was two minutes ago. What are you doing here?”
“I was just cruising around and saw the Mustang parked in front of the library. Figured you might still be working late.”
“So you just decided to stop by for a social visit, right? C’mon, Howard, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. What’s going on?”
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you to your car.”
“Actually, I thought I’d just walk. You got something to say, say it.”
“Get in the frigging car, Harry.”
I leaned down. “You want to tell me what the—”
“Now, damn it.”
All things considered, it didn’t sound like a request. I shrugged, thought to myself What now?, crossed in front of the car, and climbed in.
Spellman wore the same rumpled suit I always saw him in. Jeez, I thought, real cops really are like the ones on TV. His tie was pulled down and he was starting to get a little rank. Must have been a long day.
“What’s up, Howard?”
He started the car, jerked it into gear, pulled a U-turn in the middle of Seventh, and headed up the hill toward the state capitol.
“I been reading about you in the papers, bud.”
“Yeah, well, I hate to fall back on clichés, but don’t believe everything you read.”
He chuckled, brought the car to a stop at the light on Church. “I don’t. But sounds like you’ve gotten yourself in a rack of shit this time.”
“I think it’s just some wild imaginations down in Williamson County.”
“I wouldn’t take this too lightly if I were you, Harry. I spent six weeks at the FBI academy with D’Angelo. He’s no small-town cop.”
I stared out the window, waiting for the light to change. “Yeah, but I’m not sure it’s him. There’s a smartassed little punk of an assistant DA down there who seems to have a hard-on for me.”
I saw Spellman grin in the green glow of the stoplight as it changed. “You do have that effect on people.”
We drove up the hill to the next corner and made a left to circle around in front of the library. I sat silently, wondering what was going on. Howard braked to a stop behind the Mustang and killed the engine.
Spellman leaned into the corner made by the door and the edge of the seat and propped his feet up on the transmission hump.
“You look tired, Howard,” I said. “What are you doing up this late?”
“It’s been a long day,” he said. We sat there a moment longer and I began to feel those flickers in my gut again.
“I’m doing it, Harry,” he said. “Next month.”
I cocked my head toward him, eyebrow raised.
“Bagging it,” he continued. “I’m taking my retirement.”
I smiled. “Good for you.”
“My oldest boy’s down in Florida working on a dive boat. He got me interested in it.”
“No shit,” I said. “Howard the diver.”
“Made a deal on a boat down there. We sold the house. The wife’s home packing now. Got an apartment outside Key West. We’re going to open a dive shop. I drive the boat, the kid’ll be divemaster. The wife’ll keep the books.”
“Every cop’s dream,” I said. “Retire to Florida.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“So is this just your way of saying goodbye? Sitting outside my office in the middle of the night?”
He sat there a moment longer, saying nothing and staring out through the windshield.
“Harry, I seen you fuck up before,” he said after about thirty seconds of awkward silence. “You’ll probably fuck up again. It’s not your fault; you can’t help it, I guess.”
“Thanks, Howard. I appreciate your understanding.”
“I’m worried about you this time, though.”
“Man, I didn’t kill R. J. Reed. There’s nothing they can hang on me. They’re just blowing smoke ’cause they got nobody else. It’ll blow ov—”
“That ain’t what I’m talking about,” he interrupted.
I tried to study his face, but it was too dark. “Want to tell me what you are talking about?”
He drew in a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “Harry, we been getting calls. Calls about your landlady.”
Something inside me went numb and I started hearing a lot of wind in my ears, like that familiar old feeling of picking up a conch shell and holding it to the side of your head.
“What kind of calls?”
I saw his tongue catch the light and glisten as he licked his lips nervously. “Some people have been complaining that maybe you had something to do with it.”
I could hear my own heartbeat above the wind now.
“What the hell—” I stammered. “I mean, she had a heart attack, died. I wasn’t even there. I mean, what’s his name, Jack Maples, was there. He said it was natural—”
Then it hit me.
“Goddamn it!” I snapped, slapping the dashboard, suddenly furious.
“What?”
“It’s that son-of-a-bitch son of hers, isn’t it?” I demanded. “She left me the house and some money and the lawyer told him if he contested the will, it’d tie up everything for years. So he’s decided to get it this way.”
Howard stared at me.
“Am I right?” I yelled.
“Calm down,” Howard said.
“Let the bastard prove it! I’ll sue his ass for defamation so bad.… If he wants a war, I’ll give him one.”
“We’ve got a statement from someone, Harry.”
My chest locked up, midbreath. “What statement?”
“A statement from someone who says they saw you tampering with the phone box outside Mrs. Hawkins’s house the day before she died. They think you were disabling the phones so she couldn’t call for help.”
I slid down on the vinyl just a little, my butt forward, my shoulders sagged.
“That’s Crazy Gladys next door. She’s nuts, Howard. Besides, that was after Mrs. Hawkins died. My phone had been turned off because I forgot to pay the bill. I switched the wires at the entrance bridge so I could call out on her line—”
“Save it, Harry. It’s not my case. I’m not on this one.”
“You mean you guys are taking this seriously?”
“We don’t have any choice,” he said.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked blankly. This can’t be happening, I thought. This isn’t real.
“The family’s pushing for an exhumation. They want an autopsy, which given what’s going on in the ME’s office, is a bit of a problem. We’ll probably have to send the body down to Memphis to the medical school. The farther away from Nashville, the better.”
“This is insane,” I said. “This is crazy. I don’t believe this. You can’t believe I killed her.”
“I don’t. I also don’t believe Doc Marsha did anything hinky on the Reed autopsy either. But it’s appearances, Harry. When something looks rotten, you gotta check it out.”
I turned and faced him. “Just tell me one thing. How bad is it? Do I need a lawyer?”
“The truth?” he answered. “Probably. But if you get one, it’s only going to make you look like you’ve got something to hide.”
“Who’s handling the case?” I asked. “Who’s going to be calling me?”
“Fouch,” he said.
“E.D.’s a good man. He’ll be fair.”
“That’s right. Be straight with him and you’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “And the good guys always win.”
“I’m sorry, Harry.”
I stared ahead through the windshield. “And this conversation never happened, right?”
Howard nodded. “Dive boat means a lot to me. I ain’t going to jeopardize my retirement.”
“I understand.”
“Good night, Harry. Watch your ass.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Guess I’d better.”
I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The drizzle had turned into a light but steady rain. I felt it running through my hair onto my scalp and down the sides of my face, but it was like it wasn’t really me there.
Like it was somebody else standing there at midnight watching Howard Spellman pull away in the rain.