Billy stood in the doorway of the guesthouse to keep an eye on Gracie Ella while he texted the ME’s office:
Victim Lee, Caroline. Case 442976: Pregnant at time of death? Respond ASAP.
Had Mrs. Adams seen or talked to Caroline on Monday? Was the baby real or fantasy?
He palmed the key so she couldn’t lock herself in and started for the house. Blue met him halfway there in the gloom of the shadowy pecan grove.
“I believe Mrs. Adams needs some attention,” he said.
“I’ll ask the nurse to take her upstairs and give her supper. Was she any help?”
As much as he trusted Blue, he couldn’t go into detail. “You were right about her mental state. Do you know where she lives in Memphis?”
“Near the Lees’ house about a mile from the hospital.”
That fit. Sharma lived near the hospital, too. Caroline could’ve stopped by her aunt’s house on her way to pick up Sharma for the drive down, or she could’ve called.
“Mr. Lee is awake,” Blue said. “I think he’s up to a few questions as long as you’re careful about it.”
“That’s great. By the way, did Caroline ever talk about reconciling with the doctor?”
“Never.”
“Do you know if she was seeing another man?”
Blue frowned in the twilight. “No I don’t. Are you planning to ask Mr. Lee that question? The man’s daughter is dead.”
Billy didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He kept walking.
They continued through the pecan grove, the smell of decomposing shells rising from the damp earth. A mockingbird cried in the treetops. He could see Odette moving past the lighted kitchen windows at the back of the house. The Lees weren’t his people. This wasn’t his home, but a part of him would always be connected to this dark, sweet soil.
They came around the side of the house to find Saunders Lee standing on the front porch in his royal blue bathrobe with gray sweats on underneath. He’d aged even more than in the portrait in Caroline’s bedroom, his expression vague and searching. He turned at the clicking sound made by dried magnolia leaves as they waded through them.
“Blue? Is Sparrow driving down?” The old man’s voice had a hoarse quality, his movements stiff.
“I’ll see what I can find out, sir,” Blue said. “Someone you know has stopped by. Billy Able. You’ll remember him from Mr. Kane’s diner. Billy was his nephew.”
“Why, yes.” The old man straightened, calling up some of the old glamour from those summer days when he would arrive at the diner, tanned and clean-shaven, in a crisp white shirt and khaki slacks pressed to a knife-edge. Back then his very presence could calm a room.
He clasped Billy’s hand in both of his to disguise the palsy. “Your uncle and I had several conversations about your future in the practice of law. I was saddened by . . .” He frowned, searching for the right words.
“Thank you, sir. His death was a shock. Those Saturday afternoon political discussions the two of you had meant the world to him. I took a different route than what my uncle had in mind, but I stayed within the law.”
Saunders chuckled then studied him under the porch light, uncertain of his meaning. He turned to Blue. “How did we do at the field trial?”
“Hawk won,” Blue said.
The old man clapped his hands. “Wonderful. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.” Blue placed his hand on Saunders’s back as he shuffled inside the foyer.
The layout of the house hadn’t changed since the last time Billy had been there. The stairway mounted the wall on the left and opened to the second and third floors. Directly in front of them a long, broad hall ran the depth of the house and ended in wide French doors that let onto a screened porch and the stone terrace beyond. He could smell Odette’s good cooking coming from the kitchen and the wood smoke from the fireplace in the parlor on the other side of the entry.
Saunders led the way into the parlor, the main gathering place in the house, furnished with antiquities collected by the Lees on their travels. He remembered the parlor from the day he and Caroline had slow-danced in front of the fireplace when they were teenagers. Chinese vases on alabaster pedestals stood on either side of the doorway. Oriental carpets covered the hardwood floors. There were rosewood screens and ebony chests, beeswax candles and bowls of potpourri, a bookcase full of leather-bound books, scrimshaw carvings, and delicate porcelain figurines.
A Chesterfield sofa stood in front of the fireplace with straight-back chairs pulled up on either side. An ornate sterling tea service and a pair of massive candelabras crowded the top of a sideboard against the wall. The afternoon he’d spent with Caroline she’d told him about the six paintings hanging in the room. They’d been handed down through generations of Lees, painted by famous impressionists and American landscape artists. He’d guessed the paintings were fine enough to hang in a museum but thought it rude to ask.
Blue went to the sideboard, poured three bourbons from the decanter, and handed them around. Saunders raised his glass. “A salute to a dog named Hawk. And to Blue, his excellent trainer.”
Blue gave a slight bow before taking a seat on the sofa. Billy and Saunders took the chairs. “How many head of cattle are you running this year?” Billy asked.
“We’re out of the cattle business,” Saunders said. “Our Charolais bull broke his leg while mating. But he died a happy bull.” He stopped, seeming to gather his words. “We’re down to the four saddle horses we use for dove shoots and Blue’s personal mount for the field trials.”
“Horses are more trouble than a pack of kids,” Blue said. “The vet bills never stop coming.”
“This place burns through money like a sailor in a cat house.” Saunders sipped his bourbon and seemed to relax. “Taxes and farm bills take every bit of my income and then some. A real estate developer out of Jackson wants to subdivide the place. When I’m gone, Roz might have to move in that direction.”
“Your family won’t let that happen,” Blue said, then frowned and glanced at Billy. By family, Blue had meant Caroline not Martin.
It was an opening so Billy took it. “Speaking of family, you mentioned your daughter earlier.”
“Communications are down. I’m surprised Sparrow isn’t here to check up on her old man. She works at the firm, you know. I’ve asked her to handle your uncle’s will.”
“I remember Caroline. She was to be married recently.”
He nodded. “My daughter had a change of heart.”
Blue cleared his throat. “I met Dr. Sharma when he came down several months ago. Seemed like a good man. Mr. Lee, you think she’d reconsider her decision and go ahead with the wedding?”
The older man shifted in his chair. “The doctor asked for Sparrow’s hand in the proper manner, so I gave my blessing, but she told me last week it would’ve been the mistake of her life. Probably for the best. My daughter’s had her problems. She needs a steady husband, and more than a busy doctor like Raj Sharma can give her.”
The fire popped. Blue got to his feet and swept an ember off the hearth. He stole a look at Billy that said, That’s it, bud. No more help from me.
Saunders sipped his drink. “You know everyone at the club thinks the Lee clan is perfect, but we’re like every other good Southern family—‘crazy’ runs in our blood. We’re just better at pretending.” He laughed softly.
Billy thought of his mother’s delicate, high-strung nature. He knew what Saunders meant. “Maybe your daughter called off the wedding because she found someone else. Someone steadier like you say.” He let the statement dangle. Felt like crap doing it.
Saunders took out a handkerchief and wiped the drool leaking from the corner of his mouth. “Are you suggesting that my daughter was seeing another man while she was engaged?” The old man looked down at the glass in his hand and rotated it. “You said you’re working within the law. What exactly does that mean?”
“I’m with the Memphis Police Department.”
“I see. What division?”
“Investigative.” Billy’s mobile pinged. “Sorry, sir. I have to check this. If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded at Blue.
Blue followed him into the entry. “Time you headed back to Memphis. Mr. Lee is worn out.”
“Is there a bathroom?” he asked, and kept walking.
“Down the hall, second door,” Blue said, exasperated.
Billy passed sepia-toned photos of Lee family members—men with stern expressions and handlebar mustaches, their wives draped in ropes of pearls and posing beside vases of overblown roses. The women looked passively sweet, unlike Rosalyn Lee. Saunders had gone against type when he married.
In the washroom he checked the text:
Regional Forensic Center. Lee, Caroline, 442976. Findings: positive ten weeks pregnant.
He pocketed his phone. Five weeks pregnant when Caroline had called off the wedding. Had she known about the baby early and decided against being trapped in a bad marriage? Did Sharma learn about the pregnancy and persuade her into a last minute wedding? Or had she told him it was another man’s child, and he killed her because of it?
Gracie Ella had known about the baby. What more did she know? Right now she was upstairs with the nurse. After she had supper, he would try for another conversation.
Those plans changed when he came out of the washroom and heard Rosalyn Lee’s voice shattering the peace of the house. He started for the parlor, not surprised she was in full cry with a stranger’s car parked in the driveway. At the door he saw Blue and Saunders on their feet with glasses in hand and their backs to the fireplace. Rosalyn was standing beside the sofa, pointing at a cushion.
“I come here and find you sitting on my furniture in your dirty work clothes,” she snapped at Blue. She went to the sideboard and picked up a crystal decanter, holding it for Saunders to see. “Half gone. He’s drunk up our best bourbon.”
Then she turned her eyes on Billy, steel points behind tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Do you really want me to answer that, Mrs. Lee?” he asked.
Her body stiffened but she didn’t give an inch, only glanced at her husband.
“Now, Roz, I invited these men in for a celebration. Hawk won the field trial—”
“You know the doctor said alcohol fights with your medication.”
Saunders drew himself up, the wobble of his head growing more pronounced.
“Where’s the nurse,” Rosalyn said. “Lucille! Lucille!”
Billy knew no plantation owner’s wife would ever speak to her husband in that manner, especially not in front of the help. Every man wants to hold on to the way he’s always seen himself. The damage Rosalyn was inflicting was painful to watch.
“Coming, Mz. Rosalyn,” a stout woman in a gray uniform called as she came down the stairs. Behind the woman, Gracie Ella leaned over the handrail, a fierce expression directed at Rosalyn.
“You killed my Caroline,” she screamed.
Rosalyn cut her eyes to Saunders. “Don’t listen to anything your sister says, dear. She’s confused. Now let’s say goodbye to these gentlemen, and we’ll go into supper.”
Gracie Ella pushed past the nurse on the stairs to run across the entry, her robe flapping behind her like wings. “It’s your fault,” she screeched at Rosalyn. The nurse ran after her and grabbed her by the shoulders from behind. Gracie Ella struggled to throw her off.
“Control yourself, Gracie,” Rosalyn spat. “Or I’ll call the clinic and they’ll come get you.” They stood toe-to-toe, both radiating hatred.
Saunders’s voice cut through the drama. “What’s Gracie talking about?”
Gracie Ella eased in his direction, her hands turned up in supplication. “Caroline was coming here to be with you, sweetheart. She didn’t make it.”
Saunders looked around the room, disoriented and shaken. “Roz?”
“Take that bitch upstairs,” Rosalyn said to the nurse. She turned on Billy. “You and Blue wait on the porch.”
Blue raised his eyebrows and waited for Billy to take the lead. Out of respect they did as Rosalyn asked and went outside.
On the porch Blue paced in and out of the light from the two hanging lanterns, the glare shining off his maroon jacket. Billy pressed his back against a column. He could only imagine the words being spoken in the house, reliving his own shock when he knew Caroline was gone. Then came the heart-wrenching cry. Blue closed his eyes and dropped his head. The old man’s pain cracked and bloomed and spread itself throughout the night.
Minutes later Rosalyn came out and closed the door behind her. Her face was as pale and hard as marble. Billy wanted to feel compassion for this woman who’d lost a daughter and was slowly losing her husband, but he’d seen the damage she could do. Sympathy for her plight wasn’t in him.
“My husband needs you,” she said to Blue.
He nodded and went inside.
She turned on Billy. “He’s a very sick man. You came here without permission and questioned him with no regard for his welfare. He told me you suggested our daughter had been chasing around with a man other than her fiancé. It’s unconscionable. Tomorrow I’ll phone Director Davis. By the time I’m through, you’ll be demoted to hosing down the cellblock.”
This woman was a dirty fighter. He thought about the pills in Caroline’s bathroom and had a better understanding of where her problems had begun.
“Caroline was on her way here to be married the night she was murdered,” he said. “Did you know that?”
Rosalyn glared at him. “Of course. I’m her mother.”
“Yesterday you were surprised when we told you about the wedding gown. In fact you disputed it. She was ten weeks pregnant. Did you even know that?” A cruel question, but he didn’t care.
Rosalyn’s eyes narrowed. “I know your people. Your father was useless. He wanted a rich wife, so he tricked your mother into marrying him. Then he tomcatted around with anything wearing a skirt. He left your mother with a bankrupt business and a child. No wonder she drank.”
That stung. Too much truth in her words. “Don’t talk about my family, Mrs. Lee. It’s unhealthy.”
Her chin went up. “I see your father in you, Detective. You’re trash just like him. Get off my property.”
Rosalyn watched as the detective stalked to his car. She knew that walk, body angled forward, graceful and aggressive. He could thank his mother for his good bone structure. His hot temper came from his daddy. The car door slammed, the engine cranked, gravel spun away from the tires. The taillights winked between the cedar trees like burning match heads. His father, Jackson, had been the most reckless man she’d ever taken into her bed. She’d never gotten over the thrill of him.
They’d started as teenagers meeting on the sly at the drive-in on summer nights. In the daytime the place was a dirt lot with speaker stands lined up in rows like parking meters, half of them decapitated by patrons driving off with the speaker still hooked to their door frames. Even though the big screen was falling down and pocked with shotgun shells, at night the place was magic. Movie stars were twenty-feet tall. Richard Gere in American Gigolo. Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in Body Heat. Sex on the screen was new, hot. The sex in the cars was even hotter. She craved Jackson Able, carnal, mysterious, erotic. She’d loved the risk of being with him.
She’d been Rosalyn Taylor then, the Taylor lineage just as august as the Lees’ but not nearly as wealthy. The Taylors had been plantation owners until they moved to Memphis two generations earlier and began parceling off their land. The hunting lodge and fifty acres east of the levee was all that was left. When she and Saunders were teenagers, the Lees and the Taylors would spend summers at their Mississippi homes and share Thanksgiving turkeys shot on the property. They attended the same church and voted Republican. The families had taken it for granted that she and Saunders would eventually unite the clans.
She’d never loved Saunders. She wasn’t capable of it. Love never found a way of entering her. Saunders knew this and accepted her as she was. Producing children was expected although she knew she’d have no talent for raising them. Martin and Caroline recognized her shortcomings early. She’d quit pretending with them a long time ago.
But in between training bras and her boring marriage, she’d had Jackson Able.
She would go with a carload of girlfriends to the drive-in on Friday nights. Partway through the movie she would slip out of the car, slip off her panties, and find Jackson’s blue Impala waiting at the end of a back row. He would be ready for her. His hands cupped her bottom as they pounded themselves into noisy climax, relying on the movie soundtrack to cover their passion. She would return to her girlfriends, redolent with sex, the idiots buying the story that she had gone for popcorn and run into friends. She thought if she were careful, she wouldn’t have to give up sex with Jackson for a year or two.
In July, Dressed to Kill was the second feature of the evening. By the time she’d found Jackson’s car, the opening credits had rolled and naked Angie Dickinson was pleasuring herself in a steamy shower scene. Jackson went crazy. He pulled her onto his lap and took her roughly. When he was done, he’d pressed his hand against the small of her back and breathed into her hair. He’d said, Let’s get married. We’ll figure out the rest later.
She’d known how his mind worked. If she said no, he would shove every dirty thing they’d done in Saunders’s face. Saunders would have no choice but to walk away. Jackson thought he’d trapped himself a rich girl who would be a ticket into the society that had been closed to him.
She’d buttoned her blouse and told him if he shot his mouth off within a mile of Saunders she would turn him in for stealing electronics out of the back of a delivery truck. He’d given her a Walkman and Betacam, both still in their boxes with barcodes, so she had proof of the theft. He kicked her out of the car without her panties and skirt. She had to walk back to her girlfriend’s car half naked. They laughed in her face, saying they had known all along she’d been sneaking off to hump the white trash stud.
Those bitches were all wearing size eighteen now. They had to pretend their husbands weren’t cheating alcoholics and that they liked being saddled with a pack of grandkids every weekend. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind.
On the porch, the night wind blew off the lawn bringing with it the scent of cedar trees. She should go back inside to Saunders. Without Caroline to take care of him, she would have to move him back to Memphis. A developer had made an offer for the property. She’d let the house go and keep the leased acreage for income. Losing the place would take the heart right out of Saunders, if it hadn’t already been broken by Caroline’s murder.
She started inside, thinking about Jackson Able’s son. He’d said it was unhealthy to run down his family. He didn’t know the meaning of unhealthy. But he was about to find out.