The next morning, a Sunday, Edward and Linda went to the Avalon Drug Store, in a small shopping center a block from River Oaks. The Avalon had been an institution for decades. It was indeed a small drug store, but it was better known for its luncheonette, the place for Sunday breakfast among those who cared. They had to wait for a table, of course. As they did, Edward looked around. Almost immediately he saw three people he knew, two he’d gone to high school with, one a well-known real estate developer. But Edward was looking for one particular person, and quickly spotted him. ‘A minute,’ he said to Linda, and strolled into the restaurant space.
Gerald spotted him just as Edward pretended to notice him for the first time. They exchanged names and greetings. Gerald held court here most Sunday mornings, taking up a table for hours, sometimes with company, sometimes not. Today he had a young man across from him who ignored Edward. Gerald leaned his cheek on his hand and said, ‘Well, the famous Edward. I heard all about your trial, after of course your prison stay. You must tell me all about that someday.’
‘Love to.’ Edward widened his eyes. ‘Which reminds me. I need to talk to someone who lives in River Oaks and knows everybody.’
Gerald smiled. ‘That does sound like me. Today, as you can see, I’m preoccupied. But I’ll be receiving at home tomorrow. About noon?’
Edward said fine, didn’t need to ask the address, and strolled on into the shelves.
‘Who’s that?’ Linda asked. ‘Old friend?’
‘Not exactly. But we’ve known each other a long time. Gerald has known everybody a long time.’
Linda gazed at the man. Gerald didn’t turn his head, but he grew a smile that said he was aware of her scrutiny and enjoyed it.
Big Donald called later that day, anxious to see Edward. ‘We’ll get together very soon,’ Edward assured him. ‘You just keep a low profile while you heal. And try to figure out who wanted you dead. Four strangers jump you in jail, that wasn’t a warning. That was supposed to be a hit.’
‘Man, you don’t have to tell me.’
‘So who wants you dead, man?’
Donald didn’t answer. Edward thought he himself would lapse into such a silence if someone put that same question to him.
‘Think about it. I’ll see you Tuesday, man.’
His week was filling up.
Edward kept his appointment, if that’s what it was, with Gerald the next day after a busy day of appointments that made him forget he was a sort of lawyer again these days. Gerald lived in a smaller River Oaks home, two stories in the traditional red brick, with vines trailing up one side wall. A bay window in front looked like an eyeball keeping watch on the neighborhood.
Gerald himself opened the door, no boy toy in evidence today, or anyone else in the house. Gerald, who was maybe ten years older than Edward with a world-weariness older than both of them, gestured him into a sitting room. The home was beautifully furnished in a slightly old-fashioned style of angular furniture and elaborate window treatments. The sitting room could have been called a library, since one wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with individual volumes, no matched sets sold by the foot.
Gerald himself was slim and elegant, with a slightly bulging forehead, languid brown eyes that could turn piercing, long-fingered hands. He had tea for them. Many people thought he must have inherited his wealth, since he never lifted a finger to earn a dime, and Gerald encouraged that perception, but Edward happened to know he was a self-made man. From an early age Gerald had been a traveler, fierce to devour the world. And he had written about his travels, in books that became a series under a pseudonym. In the digital age the series had blossomed into apps and websites, long since sold to some conglomerate for enough to keep Gerald comfortably at home.
‘Your girl is lovely, Edward. Are you engaged? Has she left that firm where she’s a paralegal now that she’s earned her court reporter’s certification?’
‘Not yet,’ Edward said, acknowledging Gerald’s research with a smile. ‘And why am I here, do you know?’
Gerald’s smile turned musing. ‘I suppose you want to know about the Greenes, what with you being appointed to represent her kidnapper.’
Well, that was easy, it had been reported in a small story in the paper. Edward just nodded.
Gerald frowned, stopped fussing with the tea things, and looked Edward in the eye. ‘They are a toxic couple. He’s up from nowhere into supposedly a lot of money doing this and that. She’s old school Houston rich, the riches probably faded away by this time. They live about three blocks over in some huge eyesore. Sterling, so called, is a thug in a tux. Or a hardhat some days. Diana, she’s more interesting. Her family raised her to be a socialite, which to her distress is a category that no longer exists. So she married money, which is the other thing that term means.’
‘And the toxicity?’
‘No one wants them around but you can’t not invite them to things. So you see them at receptions and parties, either avoiding each other or glaring across the room, her flirting with a few carefully selected targets and him clumsily trying to do the same thing and just making a fool of himself with women who wouldn’t be caught dead with him. I mean that literally, they would drag themselves back from hell so their bodies would not be found in bed with him. Meanwhile Diana is just expert. She can flirt with a man while talking to his wife. She can flirt with a man while suggesting a new mistress for him. She can …’
‘Gerald?’
Gerald stopped his monologue and leaned across the space between them, touching Edward’s hand just for a moment. His smile was a work of art.
‘Are you sure you’re not imagining some of this?’
Gerald leaned back and gave the idea due thought. ‘As if she’s the perfect incarnation of my love of gossip? Edward, you’re brilliant. As I always knew. Yes, I see it now, I’ve been projecting …’
Edward shrugged modestly, waiting to get to the real stuff.
‘Nothing!’ Gerald suddenly said, leaning back into his face. ‘Edward, Edward. Edward. When have you ever known me to be wrong? So shut up and let me give you the deal. Diana is designed for this. I love her from afar.’
‘So you have a list of her lovers?’ Edward mentally took out a pen and notepad.
Gerald stared at him in a very level way, no longer doing anything arch at all.
‘No.’
‘No? No confirmed kills?’ Gerald shrugged. Edward continued, ‘So for all you know she’s just a serial flirt? And her husband’s just jealous over that?’
Gerald opened his mouth, obviously started to explain, then just shrugged. ‘Whatever the Greenes’ other failings, they’ve been very discreet. Or nothing ever happened. Who knows?’ He raised his eyebrows.
Edward was exasperated. ‘You should.’
Raising his shoulders and his eyebrows, mad at himself, Gerald said, ‘I know.’
They finished their meeting with idle chatter about people they knew, what Edward was doing, nothing about Gerald, who never talked about himself, until Edward rose, saying, ‘Well, if you hear anything …’
He was walking away when he heard a tone in Gerald’s voice. ‘Are you recruiting me?’
Edward opened his mouth and Gerald continued, ‘As one of your team? As your sort of celebrity gossip consultant?’
Edward almost fell for it, stopped his tongue, and said, ‘Yes.’
Gerald grew a slow smile. ‘Thank you so much, Eddie, for thinking of me.’
Eddie. Edward knew the joke. He smiled back.