2

After a few hours in my office computing expenses in the Johnson trial, Lake’s request put me on Northside Drive in my antique Bentley heading for Linda Lake’s house. I would do anything for Lake because he would do anything for me. But this situation held particular interest. For all the time I spent in Athens, a city that makes me feel good just being in it, I’d never even laid eyes on Baxter Carlisle.

I knew what time Linda picked up Susanna from kindergarten because I’d been put on the list of people authorized to fetch her after school. Linda took me up on my offer to do so on the days she had a Junior League charity function or tennis. I’m always happy to do it. I live in the neighborhood—Peachtree Hills—and love that little girl like she was my own. I sometimes think of her as mine. I’ve never married, although I know that’s no precondition—either to childbirth or loving children. I was engaged once, but my fiancé died in a drive-by shooting handing out flyers for Big Brothers in neighborhoods desperately in need of Big Brothers.

I turned from Northside Drive onto West Wesley. A shot or a backfire startled me. I quickly recalculated. Small caliber. Tires squealed. Something had come for me while I was lost in thought.

Who?

I looked in the rearview mirror. An old battering ram of a Cadillac headed straight for my rear end. At least two large people loomed inside. I hadn’t considered being followed. Why hadn’t I foreseen this? I should have driven the used Audi I purchased and drove on road trips. I floored the Bentley’s gas pedal. Pickup was solid. The car lurched into high gear. I flew ahead—dear God don’t let someone decide to cross the street without looking.

Another shot split the air. And another.

In the rearview mirror, on the Caddy’s passenger side, I spotted the hand holding the gun. The shooter was firing into the trees. He wasn’t going to kill me, and he wasn’t going to slam me from behind. This was scare-back time. I’d scared Big DD with prison. No bad deed gets forgiven. It only gets even. The Cadillac revved and lurched around my car. I swerved onto Argonne Street. From the passenger window, the hand holding the gun wavered and fired into the sky again as the car disappeared up the street. With my heart beating a rumba, I reversed and got back on West Wesley. I didn’t see the Cadillac when I crossed Peachtree Street and entered Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. God forbid I should lead the bad guys to Linda Lake’s place.

I needed to let my pulse get back to simply racing and sat in a parking slot and thought about what I had happened. What should I do? Call Lake? He had enough to do without looking for a car that was, by now, hidden in some ramshackle garage. After two or three minutes, I started the Bentley and pulled into a gas station. Doug, the day manager, had finished with a customer buying a lottery ticket. “What gives, Dru?”

“Thirsty,” I said and went to the cold Coke cooler and fished out a wet bottle.

“On me,” he said. “You sure look hot.”

Although he flirted a lot, I knew he didn’t mean sexy. My face must have been aflame. I opened the bottle on the side of the cooler. “Nearly wrecked,” I said and heaved a deep breath.

“You drive Peachtree Street enough, you get used to it. Defensive driving that’s what you got to do. The Bentley okay?”

“Close, but not a scratch.”

“I ever tell you I was here when Portia’s mother used to drive that car down Peachtree Street?”

“Yeah you have.”

“She caused many an ol’ boy to swerve into bus stops and parking meters.”

When Portia’s mother could no longer drive anything, and when my car was bombed, Portia insisted I buy the Bentley for the princely sum of five hundred dollars.

“Thanks, Doug,” I said, leaving.

My cell phone played Haydn’s Piano Sonata No. 52 in E-flat major. Lake. Probably wondering why I wasn’t at Linda’s. I let it play out and drove to my street, parked the Bentley in my one-car garage and got into the ten-year-old Audi, new by the Bentley’s standards. If I was followed, I didn’t detect a standout among the silver cars and SUVs behind me. I took a circuitous route to Linda’s and parked for ten minutes on a side street a block over. The first of the school buses came down the street.

* * * * *

Linda wore a slacks outfit that likely cost more than my clothing allowance for the season. Although her face showed stress, her hair and makeup were flawless. Before she gave birth, she’d been the media spokeswoman for Fire Protection Services and spoke in front of the camera every chance she got.

Linda pulled me inside, saying, “I knew Rick would get you for me.” She held out her arms. “Let me take your coat. Oh my, what lovely cashmere.”

Giving up a coat that’s older than the Audi, I said, “Lake told me a little of the problem.”

With me following, Linda swayed through the minimalist, but stylish, living room, into a study. Red leather and books gleamed in winter sun slanting through plantation blinds. “It’s not five o’clock, Dru, but I think a toddy is in order.”

Toddy. For the body.

At the recessed bar, she prepared two gin and tonics, gave me mine and held hers up. “For the body.”

I held mine up. Clink. “For the body.”

“And the mind,” she said, swallowing. “Let’s sit.”

“Where’s Susanna?” I asked, cozying into a leather armchair.

Linda said she was at Lozetta’s, the part-time nanny, because she knew Susanna would want to talk about her day at school, and her new friend, and her kitten and her new exotic fish. By the time she finished saying this, I could have talked to Susanna. Linda finally wound down. “I knew you’d want to know about Baxter, and all.”

I nodded, deciding not to talk about my visits to his restaurants. “Tell me about Baxter.” And all.

She sipped at the glass rim. I have to give her credit for self-control. Lake thought she was falling apart, but I didn’t think that possible. I put the drink on a crystal coaster. After the Cadillac scare, if I took a sip I’d probably go after the whole bottle.

Linda, too, placed her glass on a coaster. “Lordy, he’s all I have since that drunk took Mama and Daddy away from us. I didn’t know where else to turn. Me and Rick, well you know, we stayed friends. It’s all we ever were really. He loved his job more than me. I always knew that, but he was so dedicated. I love a man who’s dedicated to what he believes in. He believes in Atlanta and justice ...”

My mind wanders when chatty people go all nervous to avoid a painful discussion, and I thought of my own daddy getting killed. Involuntarily my mind went to Daddy in his coffin. Then I saw Mama in the nursing home, in a rocking chair, her big blue eyes as blank as Daddy’s would have been had they been open. Stop this introspection. It gets you nowhere. You’ll be reaching for a bottle like your daddy That was another subject: Daddy’s alcoholism.

I brought my mind back to what Linda was saying.

“Susanna, the apple of his eye, and you, Dru, but I’m not the jealous type. I want Rick to be happy.”

“Me, too,” I broke in. “He’s more than happy to help you, and so am I.”

“You are?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m so glad. I don’t know which way to turn. I can’t tell you ...”

“Let’s go over what I know so far.” I recounted what Lake had told me and ended by saying, “Sounds like your brother has a Lolita complex.”

“Huh? Oh. Lolita, yes. Daddy was so het up when ...”

“When what?”

“Well, we’ll save that for another day.”

“No, if it’s about his character, we need to have it out, and now.”

“Oh, you’re so like Rick. Facts and more facts.”

“Why was your daddy so het up?”

“You know Baxter is my half-brother?” I nodded. “Daddy ...”

“Let me get the connection straight. Whose son is Baxter?”

“Mama’s by a previous marriage. She married a Carlisle when she was sixteen; had Bax when she was seventeen and divorced Tommy Carlisle when she was twenty-five. Then she married Daddy when she was twenty-seven, a Hanover. If you ask me, a better marriage than the Carlisle one.”

These society marriages might as well be arranged by a matchmaker, and arranged again, and again. Incestuous, that way. “You were saying your daddy, who is Baxter’s step-father, was irate. When—why?”

“Such dirty laundry Baxter’s gotten us into.” She hooked strands of silky blond hair behind an ear. “Bax was thirteen, fourteen—and I was little then, but I knew something bad had happened ...” She looked at the floor and rushed into speech. “Baxter diddled the little girl next door.”

“How old?”

“Nine, I think.” She looked up at me. “It wasn’t bad, more like playing doctor, or, you know…”

“It was bad,” I said.

“Oh, Dru, don’t say that.”

“What did your daddy do about it?”

“Well, Mrs. Marx came over to our house and raised the holy roof.”

“Rightly so. What happened to Baxter?”

“Daddy took a strap to his bee-hind. They were in the basement but I could hear ... Oh, Dru, it was horrid. Bax’s real daddy came and got him for the summer. Then, when school started Bax came back. It was never the same, I don’t think.”

I guess not.

“Any more incidents?”

“Baxter went away to the Georgia Military Academy.”

“Any more incidents?”

“It was in the town, a girl, fourteen, she said Bax assaulted her.”

“Raped her?”

“Well, that’s the harsh term.”

“It’s a harsh deed.”

She sighed. “Yes.”

You so desire to keep people like Linda in their fairy castles, but I couldn’t. “I understand the need to keep skeletons closeted. Once it’s over, no use dwelling on it. But it didn’t get over, did it?”

“She recanted. The girl said she consented. She didn’t go to the police or anything.”

“How much did your family pay?”

“Bax’s daddy paid, I heard. I don’t know how much.”

“I can see why you’re upset.”

“Well, yes. When we hadn’t heard anything more after the college thing ...”

“College thing? Where was this?”

“He went to college in West Virginia. Same thing, only the girl got pregnant. Bax paid support until the boy was raised.”

“Do you know this boy?”

She shook her head no. “I can’t remember his name, but it’ll come, maybe.”

“So, back to the present, you hadn’t heard anything else until this problem in Athens with Damian Hansel.”

“It’s not the same. The girl is in college.”

“No, it isn’t the same. The thinking is Baxter could have done something to Damian so he could have his girl.”

She gasped, jumped up and ran from the room, returning with a box of tissues and a handkerchief. This took thirty seconds. Sitting, dabbing at her blue eyes, she said, “I’m so glad Susanna’s not here. I hate for her to see me cry. I hate for you to see me cry. This is just so awful. These girls, they throw themselves at Bax. He’s so good-looking, and then they—they say awful things about him.”

“Have you told me everything there is to tell about Baxter and his problems?”

“Honest, I have. Bax left grad school and his daddy set him up in a different town than Atlanta.” She laid her hands in her lap. “You know what I think?”

“I’d like to know.”

She lowered her head and looked through her mascaraed lashes. “His daddy did that so he didn’t have to be bothered with him anymore. Tommy Carlisle was like that. Everything was about him.”

I let a few seconds slip by. “If you really want me to help you, I’ll have to talk to Baxter. Will he talk to me?”

She grinned. “Oh, he’d love to talk to you. He’s not always after—after the young ones. He’s had girlfriends, older ones. He’s brought them to Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s probably what Rick remembers about Bax. You better be careful. Baxter might take you away from Rick, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.”

There was really nothing left to say, so I had her scribble Baxter’s address and phone number on a slip of monogrammed note paper, let her cry her thanks on my shoulder in the living room and sniff back grief at the door.

This older one was happy to be outside, taking a breather.