It was dark by the time Mars reached his Richmond motel. But not, Mars decided, too late to check in with Gordon Ball, Chief Taylor’s pal who was a deputy chief in the Richmond Police Department. Ball had promised to have suggestions for Mars on contacts to make in Richmond.
“Where’re you staying?” Ball asked when Mars called. When Mars told him, Ball said, “My wife’s outta town, and I haven’t had dinner yet. You can get from where you are to the Fan real easy.”
“The Fan?” Mars said, assuming Ball was going to suggest meeting at a sports bar.
“The neighborhood where I live.” Ball gave Mars directions to a restaurant called Not Betty’s in the Fan. “Get you started on a little Richmond culture,” Ball said.
Not Betty’s was the kind of place Mars liked. Casual, decent food, and cheap. Quiet enough for a solid conversation. Gordon Ball was already in a booth when Mars arrived, and in the subliminal language of cops, each recognized the other without asking.
Ball was a big guy, trim but not especially fit. His face was deeply lined, probably too much sun rather than too many years. Mars guessed Ball wasn’t much beyond his
mid- to late forties. “I appreciate your being willing to come out tonight,” Mars said.
Ball shrugged. “Happy to do it. The wife and I live couple blocks over from here. And like I said, I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“What’s ‘the Fan’?” Mars asked.
“Couple ways to answer that question,” Ball said. “The name comes from the shape of the district—streets in the district radiate from Monroe Park out to the Boulevard in a kinda fan shape. The character of the neighborhood is a real mix—architecturally, racially, economically. There’s Monument Avenue, which is the high-end part of the district with lots of historic mansions. At the other end of the scale is the street my wife and I moved to when our youngest went off to college. Bought an already renovated townhouse. One neighbor is on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, another neighbor is an artist who’s married to a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank—middle-class professionals, like the wife and me.”
Mars took a sip of his Coke. “Probably not a lot of cops.”
Ball raised and dropped his eyebrows, shrugging. “No, not a lot of cops. That’s a universal, isn’t it? Richmond or Minneapolis—or any of the other cities where I’ve been on a police force, for that matter. Not many cops have a liberal bent and a neighborhood like the Fan tends to attract more liberal types. To be fair, most of our guys—and women, for that matter—are raising young families. They want the convenience and space they get in a house in a suburban subdivision. Can’t say I blame them. The wife and I lived in the suburbs for almost twenty years. You married?”
Mars shook his head. “Divorced. A ten-year-old son.”
“Your ex lives in the suburbs?”
“No. I’m a city guy. Bought a house in a residential part of the city when I was married. My wife stayed in the house after the divorce.”
“What’s your ex do?”
“She stays home with our son.”
“Whooaa,” Ball said, “that must be a stretch on a cop’s salary—maintaining two households.”
“My expenses are minimal. Your wife works?”
Ball nodded. “Does real well as a financial advisor with one of the investment firms here in town. But her real passion is art. She does some work on the side for a local fine arts consultant who buys for corporations and the hoity-toitys who live out in the West End.”
Their food arrived, and Ball sat back. When the waitress left, Ball said, “Tell me about this case you’re out here on.”
Mars talked through the Beck case, focusing on his interpretation of the numbers on Beck’s arm and how those numbers linked to the Twenty-eighth Virginia’s flag.
“So what you’re looking for,” Ball said, “is someone involved in this flag issue who’d care enough to kill descendents of the First Minnesota.”
“In a nutshell,” Mars said, “That’s it.”
Ball smiled. “You’re two years two late.”
“Meaning,” Mars said, “Hec Macintosh?”
Ball nodded. “How’d you hear about Hec?”
“FBI. Phil Stern, one of the ROFers who was involved with Macintosh. Stern said pretty much exactly what you just said when I asked him about likely candidates. What we’re thinking is that there was someone else involved with Hec who maintained a much lower profile. Anybody you can think of that’d fill that bill?”
Ball chewed slowly, shaking his head. “I expect you know about Junior Boosey?”
“Met with him in Green Springs. No question he was involved, but he’s not who we’re looking for. We’re looking for someone slick. Someone who could pass as a businessman. Junior might have all kinds of virtues, but slick isn’t one of them.”
“No one’s gonna disagree with you on that,” Ball said. He reached over and pulled his jacket off the back of the booth. Reaching into an inside pocket, he pulled out a sheet of folded paper. He smoothed it open on the table, holding it
open with one hand while he forked in mouthfuls of food with the other.
“What I’ve got here is mostly people affiliated with organizations that have an interest in the flag—some folks from the Museum of the Confederacy, the Virginia Historical Society. I’m afraid there’s not anyone here that’s gonna be able to point you in the direction of a suspect—but they should be real helpful in answering any questions you may have about the flag. As far as troublemakers go, sounds to me like you were on the right track with Junior.”
Mars was disappointed. He’d hoped Ball might have some ideas about specific individuals. Mars hesitated, then said, “What about Ruth Macintosh? Any possibility she could be tied into this? From what Stern said, she and Hec were soul mates.”
“Could Ruth Palmer Macintosh be involved in a muh-dah?” Ball said in mock horror. “Good god, yes. She could drop a guy at thirty feet with a look. A killer, that woman. And meaner since Hec died. She doesn’t fancy herself as a widow lady.”
“You know her then?”
“More like, know of her. She still has a fairly high profile in Richmond society. Palmer and Macintosh money together are pretty hard to ignore. The only direct contact I’ve had with her—no, I should say the only indirect contact I’ve had with her—is through my wife. My wife worked on acquiring some artwork for her. One of the first contracts my wife worked on. Just about drove her out of the business. Ruth changed her mind about what she wanted every other day, whined about prices, damaged one of the artworks and denied it was her fault, disputed her bill—the woman is seriously cheap. Putting Ruth in jail would be a public service, to my mind.”
“I’d like to try and get in touch with her.”
“Let me make a suggestion,” Ball said. “If I were you, I’d try talking to her sister first. Bunny Palmer. Lives down on Cary Street Road—west end, but wrong side of the Road.
Bunny and Ruth may be sisters, but they’re a powerful argument against genetic determination. As different as—well, I can’t say there’s any two things that come to mind that are as different as Ruth and Bunny. Least, what I know about Ruth. Bunny—Bunny I actually know personally. She’s an artist, and my wife’s bought things from her from time to time. Bunny’s been over to the house for dinner any number of times. Good people, is Bunny.”
Mars pushed his plate to the side. “Why talk to Bunny first?”
“’Cause Bunny is shrewd, hated Hec, and will tell you great truths. She knows Richmond society backwards and forwards and may even have more ideas than I do about somebody who’d be mixed up in a deal like this. That, and it will make Ruth crazy that you talked to Bunny first. Will set her up for agreeing to talk to you.”
“Anything else I can do to make Ruth willing to talk to me?”
Ball cast a cynical eye on Mars. “Send her your picture, and when you go on over to see her, bring a bottle of old scotch.”
It was after eleven when Mars got back to his motel. Too late to call Chris, but not too late to call Nettie. He punched in her home phone and got Nettie’s answering machine. He tried her number at the department, and she picked up on the first ring.
“Nettie. It’s after ten P.M. in Minneapolis. What are you doing in the office?”
“I’m helping with the target victim research. We’ve got two more identified down to current address and the contact process in motion. We’ve got two identified without a current location. So, making progress.”
Mars did a quick tally in his head. “Okay—so we’ve got Beck, Rowe, the guy in Salina—that makes three plus the two you had before I left—I’m assuming the two you just
said included two that didn’t have current addresses when I left?”
Nettie made a long “uhhhhh-ing” sound, then said, “Right.”
“Okay. So when I left we were at five down, eleven to go, and you’ve got two more identified down to current address, which makes nine to go. Great news. Slowly but surely …”
“How about you? Met any southern belles?”
“Gonna try to get to that tomorrow. Too soon to tell whether what I’m finding out is going to help or not. Anything else going on?”
There was a moment’s hesitation before Nettie spoke. Mars paid attention to the hesitation. Nettie didn’t do hesitation.
“Nettie—what? You sound like there’s something you’re not saying.”
There was another hesitation. Then she said, “There was something in the paper today about city negotiations for state funds at the legislature. You know, one of those preleg-islative session outlook pieces …”
“And?”
“They quoted the president of the police union on the topic of police department funding … .”
“And???”
A big sigh. “He said the union was willing to support cuts in selected areas.”
“So surprise me. One of the areas was us, right?”
“Wrong. We’re the only cut the union would be willing to support.” Then she hesitated again.
“Nettie?”
She continued without further hesitation. “A reporter from Channel Twelve called the PIO here for a reaction on the union’s quote, and in the course of that conversation, the reporter asked what you were working on now. It looks like there’s going to be a story—probably in the next few days—about our taking on a sure-thing suicide and that you are following the case in warmer climes.”
It was Mars who sighed next. “Dana Levy already gave me a heads-up on that. Thought they were going to run it last night, actually. This whole thing is stupid. To begin with, the state legislature gives precious little money to the Minneapolis Police Department, so why that becomes part of a presession budget story …”
“It doesn’t matter. You know it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” Mars said. “It just doesn’t matter that it matters.”
The line went silent, then Mars said, “I suppose it would be good, given these developments, if I could bring home a head on a platter.”
“That would be good,” Nettie said.
“Except it isn’t going to happen. Heard anything from Keegan since he left?”
“He called this afternoon. Nothing special. Just that the field agent contacts are going smoothly. It really is helpful to have him coordinate that end of things. You still planning to be back day after tomorrow?”
“Sounds like I’d damned well better be.”
Mars got a call from Ball before nine the next morning. Ball had called Bunny Palmer to ask if she’d meet with Mars. “Not a problem,” Ball reported, “except she’s not free until after one o’clock. Said you should drive out to her house around then.”
Mars took advantage of the free time to drive around Richmond. He went back to the Fan, wanting to see it in daylight. It was, as Ball had described, an eclectic mix of grand southern architecture and charming decadence. He thought about that some. Why was it that in Minneapolis urban decay looked run-down, while a neglected property down here had character?
He drove slowly along Monument Avenue, going west, passing intersections where handsome statuary reared, honoring Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and other luminaries of the Confederacy. He tried to remember
something he’d read about the significance of the position of the feet of riders’ horses in military statuary. What was it, all four feet on the ground and the rider survived the war? One foot up, injured? A good question for Chris to figure out.
The houses along Monument Avenue were unrelentingly grand, although some were less well maintained than others. At the intersection of Monument and Boulevard, he started to turn left on the Boulevard to head toward the James River. Then he caught the No Left Turn sign beside Stonewall Jackson’s statue. Mars grinned. Appropriate. Jackson, would have approved. Mars swung around the block instead, then headed south on the Boulevard, which according to his map would take him to the Downtown Expressway. He had wanted to walk along the James, but gave that up as it wasn’t clear there was a pedestrian path. Instead, he took the Downtown Expressway to Seventh Street, where he immediately found his path to the river was blocked by the Federal Reserve Bank. After another couple of blocked paths, he found his way to Tenth which took him to the Kanawha Canal where he headed west. He drove along the canal and the river to the Tredegar Ironworks, just east of Hollywood Cemetery. Finally, he found a place to park the car and was able to get out for a walk.
The James struck Mars as having a southern character. It was defiantly indolent, with more rocky outcroppings than water visible. Like the rest of Richmond, it had a self-confident grandness that defied any possible shortcomings. Ball had mentioned the previous night that there was a whitewater run along the Falls of the James. The energy of whitewater was hard to imagine from where Mars was standing.
With the Tredegar—soon to be a Civil War Museum according to postings along the old ironworks—behind him, Mars made his way up a grassy hill, past a grand-looking old white building. Not far beyond, he found himself in what looked like it might have been a working-class residential area in the past century. He noticed sign postings designating
the area as Oregon Hill. At this point he was near the massive iron gates to Hollywood Cemetery. Looking at his watch, he hesitated. He really didn’t have time for the cemetery now. He needed to get back to the car, then out to Bunny Palmer’s Cary Street Road house.
Just beyond the I-195 intersection, Cary Street became Cary Street Road, and the neighborhood transitioned from trendy commerce to elegant residences. He remembered what Ball had said about Bunny Palmer’s house, that it was on the wrong side of Cary Street Road. The houses on the north side of Cary Street Road looked just fine to Mars, as long as you didn’t look at the houses on the south side of the road. Houses on the south side of the road—the river side—were grand, in some cases full-fledged estates, while the houses to the north were comfortable, often handsome, but rarely grand.
He watched the intersections carefully. Ball had warned him that Palmer’s house was hidden behind a privet hedge, and Mars wouldn’t be able to see the house number from the street. He needed to turn right at a road that intersected with Cary Street Road and park to the side of Palmer’s house, which was on a corner.
Mars felt like Alice in Wonderland falling into another world as he stepped through an obviously artist-designed wrought-iron gate in the privet hedge. If you just looked at the house—a smugly solid saltbox shingle with a precise, gray slate roof—you’d miss that this was an artist’s home. It was the lawn that betrayed its owner’s soul. The grass was cut as finely as the greens at a world-class golf club. More than that, it had been cut in an undulating, circular pattern that shifted and changed depending on how light hit it. Set among the lawn’s various sheltered and luxuriously landscaped nooks were stunning pieces of modern and traditional sculpture.
Mars couldn’t help remembering that it was when he’d bought a lawnmower that he’d known with a fair degree of certainty that being married wasn’t going to work for him.
He’d bought the mower after he and Denise—Denise being almost six months pregnant—had moved into the house in south Minneapolis. Mars wanted to pay a neighborhood kid to mow the grass. There was no way Denise was going to spend their money to cut grass, any more than she would have paid anyone to sweep their floors. So they’d gone out to Lyndale Lawn and Garden Center and bought a hand mower.
That it was a hand mower pleased them both. It pleased Denise because a hand mower was cheap. It pleased Mars because a hand mower seemed like less to think about than a gas mower. You get a gas mower, and you’ve got to get a can to keep the gas in. You’ve gotta take the gas can to the gas station. You’ve got to be careful where you keep the can. Then you’ve got like a hundred parts of the mower that need maintenance. And Mars, being pretty sure he wouldn’t do the maintenance, had visions of hauling a gas mower back and forth to whoever it was that fixed gas mowers that weren’t maintained.
So they got a hand mower.
The hand mower was no trouble at all, primarily because Mars never took it out of the trunk of the car. Denise did not nag. She did killer looks, but she did not nag. When Mars was around the house, which was as little as possible, Denise would stand at the kitchen window, cup of coffee in one hand, the other arm bent at the elbow, knuckles on her hip, in a pose Mars never saw anyone strike other than a pregnant woman. She stared out the window at grass they both knew was too long and getting longer. She’d take a sip of coffee, glance over at Mars, then put the cup down on the kitchen counter too hard.
About three weeks after getting the mower, Mars had stayed downtown on an investigation for almost thirty-six hours. When he finally broke away and headed home in a department squad car, he remembered that The Fabulous Baker Boys had opened the previous week. He’d asked Denise if she’d wanted to go, and she’d said maybe. Which
meant no. He still had adrenaline going from the investigation and decided that going to the movie would be a good transition between work and home.
Three hours later, pulling into his driveway, it was impossible not to notice that the grass had been cut. His worst fears were realized when he hit the remote and the opening garage door revealed the hand mower sitting in a place of honor against the garage wall. Leaving the squad on the driveway, he went into the garage, approaching the mower cautiously. It looked unused, which meant nothing. Denise was fully capable of cleaning a mower spotless after cutting down a rain forest.
He’d walked slowly into the kitchen from the garage, trying to think of a legitimate reason for being indignant. Denise was on the phone, she turned slightly as he entered, didn’t acknowledge him and kept talking.
The only thing that felt right to say was the truth. When Denise hung up the phone, Mars said, “I’m never going to cut the grass. And neither are you—at least while you’re pregnant. I’ll talk to that kid who lives the other side of Olsen’s. I’ll have him come every weekend.”
So Bunny Palmer’s lawn was a particular revelation for Mars. He was still staring at it when a handsome young dark-haired, brown-skinned guy emerged from a vine-covered arch. He was followed by a gleaming-brown miniature dachshund who yapped fiercely at Mars.
“Mr. Bahr? I am Fay-leap.”
“Phillipe?” Mars repeated, holding out his hand.
“Yes, Fay-leap Gare-in. Bunny said she would be a bit late. That I should get you a drink.” He turned to the dog who was circling Mars, still yapping fiercely. “Geronimo! No way to speak to your mommy’s guest.”
Phillipe Guerin led Mars across the lawn to the front door. “Okay if I walk on this?” Mars said, worried about spoiling the perfection of the lawn’s patterned cut.
“Oh, yes,” Phillipe said. “Grass should be walked on,
don’t you think? Won’t take me but a minute to put it in order again.”
“You take care of the lawn?”
“The lawn, the garden, the pool, the silver. And I cut Bunny’s hair.”
The lawn, the garden, the pool, and the silver. The wrong side of Cary Street Road was looking pretty good to Mars.
The lawn, however, paled in comparison to the interior of Bunny Palmer’s house. It was filled with original hanging art, small and large pieces of sculpture, pottery, china, and a spontaneous mix of antique furniture, each piece of which was a work of art in its own right.
“You do the dusting, too?” Mars asked Phillipe, only half joking.
Phillipe rolled his eyes. “No, thank God. Bunny has a special cleaning person who comes in for the housework. I’m very clumsy, really. If I did it, all the china and pottery would be gone. Come, this way. I think Bunny would want you to wait in the gallery.”
The gallery was at the back of the house, a huge, high-ceilinged room that was starkly modern. “Bunny added the gallery several years ago,” Phillipe said, noticing Mars’s curiosity. “Now she shows all her own things here—and sometimes things for friends, as well.”
Mars walked across the gallery to a large window that faced the back garden. While the gallery was level with the main floor of the house, the property to the rear dropped sharply, so the gallery looked down a full story on the back garden—and on a magnificent black swimming pool.
Phillipe stood next to Mars, looking down on the pool. “Bunny,” Phillipe said with pride, “is an artist in all things. It was her idea to paint the pool black.” He flipped a switch on the wall, and dim lights came on under the pool’s glittering water. “At night,” Phillipe said, “with the lights on, the water turns a kind of copper-green color. See the horse …” He pointed at a life-size statue of a horse that stood on one side of the pool. “The pool is like the patina on the horse at night.”
“Phillipe! You haven’t given our guest a drink?”
Mars and Phillipe turned to see Bunny Palmer walking into the gallery. Geronimo sped across the floor toward Bunny, leaping into her arms as she bent toward him, arms outstretched.
Bunny was an attractive middle-aged woman with prematurely gray hair that was drawn loosely back in a knot. Wisps of hair fell around her face in calculated disarray. Her eyes were a clear, bright blue and like her house, her clothes and jewelry were works of art.
She held a hand out to Mars as she said over her shoulder, “A gin and tonic for me, Phillipe. And hold the fruit. Mr. Bahr?”
Mars shook his head. “Nothing for me, thanks. I appreciate your seeing me on short notice.”
“Oh, my word,” Bunny Palmer said. “It will be my pleasure, I assure you. Gordon said you were investigatin’ a murder Hec mighta been involved in. I can tell you the prospect of convictin’ Hec of murder—even from the grave—is like scratchin’ an itch that’s been botherin’ a long while.” There was something self-mocking and self-consciously ironic in the softness of her southern accent. She sat down on a lounge chair near the window, patting the seat next to her. “Do sit,” she said.
Mars sat. Clearly Gordon Ball hadn’t gone into any detail about why Mars wanted to talk with Bunny. “I’m going to have to disappoint you,” he said. “The murder I’m investigating took place after Hec’s death. What I’m interested in talking to you about is anyone you might know—someone who has business credentials, could pass himself off as a venture capitalist—who also had a passionate involvement in the controversy over the Twenty-eighth Virginia regimental flag that was captured at the Battle of Gettysburg … .”
Bunny moaned. “Oh, now you have gone and disappointed me. Shoot. I had such hopes we were gonna hang ol’ Hec in effigy—preferably from the outstretched tail of Jeb Stuart’s horse on Monument Avenue.”
It was, Mars thought, an interesting choice of images. He
was considering his next question when Phillipe returned with Bunny’s drink. “Oh, damn, Phillipe,” Bunny said, “I’ve just had such bad news. Shoulda had you hold the fruit and the tonic.” Phillipe, who carried a drink for himself, sat down across from them. Mars found himself wondering about Phillipe’s role in the household. On the surface, he was prepared to believe there was a romantic relationship between the two, in spite of the age difference. But beneath the surface Mars would swear there was nothing going on. There was affection and mutual dependence between the pair, but he was willing to bet nothing else.
“Tell me why you disliked your brother-in-law so much,” Mars said.
“Where to start!” Bunny said, pulling her feet up under her. “The funny thing is, I introduced Hec and Ruth. I met Hec at UVA—Ruth’s my older sister, but higher education wasn’t her thang … .” Bunny’s sarcasm was thick and blatantly intentional. “To my own now re-tro-spective amazement, I’d been datin’ Hec. Nothin’ serious as far as I was concerned, but he did cut quite a figure on campus, and we had some fun. I didn’t take his right-wingin’ as seriously then as I shoulda. I was actually getting set to cut him loose when Ruth came down to UVA for a weekend and took a fancy to him. To this day, Ruth likes to think my heart was broken. Truth is, only thing that broke my heart was seein’ what my only sister became after marrying Hec Macintosh. They got married right after Hec graduated UVA. Hec brought out all kinds of latent crap in Ruth. Bigotry and bein’ a snob foremost. Once she was a Macintosh, there was no livin’ with Ruth. We’ve not got along real well since then.”
“So you don’t see much of Ruth anymore?”
“I said we don’t get along real well. Doesn’t seem to prevent us from seein’ each other on a regular basis. Especially since Hec died. Ruth’s kinda been lost since then. She and Hec were happily married—although Lord knows she put up with plenty most women wouldn’t have … .”
“Such as? …”
“Other women, primarily. Ruth pretended it didn’t bother her any. It was common knowledge. Even on Hec’s annual turkey huntin’ expeditions, he usually took along a couple chickie babes. Everybody knew that. Ruth said publicly she wished he’d had ’em along on the last trip, mighta saved his life. Only time I ever saw her admit to bein’ jealous was over me, actually. I’d had some security problems and changed the locks on the house. Ruth and I have always had keys to each other’s houses, so I left a key on the desk at her place after the locks were changed. Hec musta picked it up, ’cause Ruth found it on his key ring, tried it on my house and accused him of all kinds of nonsense. Told me a lot, that did. Told me that Ruth was regularly checking Hec’s keys and keepin’ pretty close track of what they unlocked—and told me she suspected Hec was seein’ me on the side—why else would she have tried the key on a lock to my house? Crazy, of course. I wasn’t interested and neither was Hec. Not after all these years. He had a definite predilection for younger women.”
“But you and Ruth are still on speaking terms … .”
Phillipe said, “Well, not for a while, now … .”
Bunny’s eyebrows raised and fell and she took a big gulp of her drink. “This is gonna sound real trivial to a sensible man like yourself.”
“In my business, nothing is trivial,” Mars said.
Bunny glanced at Phillipe, then said, “We had a fallin’ out a few weeks ago. Over Phillipe, as it happens. Ruth called me up one afternoon, tellin’ me I should read some wild-eyed editorial in the Washington Times, which Ruth reads and memorizes on a daily basis. She no sooner finishes lecturin’ me on whatever it was that right-winged butt rag was expoundin’ about then she says, ‘Oh—and I need to borrow Phillipe tomorrow afternoon to do my silver before my holiday reception on Friday.’ Jus’ like that. I said, ‘Number one, if you need to borrow Phillipe, you need to ask him yourself, and I’d recommend askin’ him more than twenty-four hours in advance.’ Phillipe does after all have a busy life apart from everything he does for me … .”
“I did have a Barbie doll convention in Atlanta that weekend,” Phillipe said. “I absolutely couldn’t go over to Ruth’s for the silver and get to Atlanta on time.”
Mars resisted biting on the Barbie doll bait.
Bunny continued. “‘Number two,’ I said, ‘if you’re gonna ask a favor of me, I’d recommend not askin’ the favor in the same breath as you go quotin’ that right-winged butt rag to me.’ Ruth hung up on me. I’ve hardly talked to her since. But I expect I’ll be hearin’ from her shortly. She always comes over here for New Year’s. So she’ll call about that, jus’ like nothin’ happened.”
“And you don’t know of anyone in Hec’s circle that felt as strongly about the Confederacy as Hec did?”
“Hardly anyone in Hec’s circle that didn’t have real strong feelin’s about the Cause—you been out to Hollywood?”
“Hollywood?” Mars said. “The cemetery near downtown?”
“Exactly,” Bunny said. “What we say in Richmond is, ‘You haven’t arrived in Richmond until you’ve arrived at Hollywood.’ And it’s true. We care a lot more about the past than we do about the future. Leastwise, it seems that way, sometimes.”
“Must have been the cemetery I passed when I was walking by the river earlier.”
“That would be it. Well, you want to understand the Cause—or as Hec used to say—‘the Recent Unpleasantness’ —you need to go to Hollywood. To the section where they’ve buried Confederate soldiers. I swear, there are ghosts about that place.”
“But nobody specific you can think of—especially someone who might have been involved in the controversy over the flag to the same degree that Hec was?”
“Other than Ruth herself, no.”
Her words hung between them. Bunny heard the meaning just after speaking. She stopped cold and looked like she was about to say something, but the phone rang before she spoke. Phillipe picked up the phone, then, holding the receiver to his chest said, “Bunny, it’s Ruth for you.”
They decided it on the phone. Mars would talk to Ruth at her house after three o’clock. She was going to a reception at the Museum of the Confederacy before then, but planned on being home early.
“You want a tour of the house before you go?” Bunny asked as Mars stood.
“For sure he wants to see my Barbie dolls,” Phillipe said.
The Barbie dolls were definitely worth seeing. Phillipe’s bedroom was upstairs, above the gallery, overlooking the pool. Apart from the French doors that opened onto a small balcony over the pool, every wall, every table surface was covered with Barbie dolls.
“How many?” Mars asked, incredulous.
“Ohh,” Phillipe said, considering. “Not more than five hundred on display. But then, I have twice as many in storage, I should think. Yes, at least twice as many.”
“You sell them, trade them?”
“Both. Some, of course, will never leave me. But I travel to conventions perhaps twice a month, and I always buy, trade, and sell at conventions. It’s what makes collecting so interesting.”
As they walked back down the stairs, Bunny said, “We have a perfect symbiotic relationship, Phillipe and I. You couldn’t pay someone to do the sort of thing Phillipe does—much less to do it as perfectly as Phillipe. And yet we’re never in each other’s way, are we, Phillipe? I can be home for days at a time without seeing Phillipe—I don’t even hear his phone when it rings. And of course, he travels so much … .”
“I’m going to England day after next for a big convention. I’ll be gone for more than a week.”
“He’ll cut my hair just before he leaves, and fortunately, the grass doesn’t grow much in January. So, I’ll survive,” Bunny said. “You gotta c’mon back and see my room. No etchin’s or nothin’, but I want you to see the frame on my bed. Made out of the wood of the last walnut tree on the Palmer farm, out west on the James River.”
As they walked through the house, Mars couldn’t help noticing that there was a dog’s bed in each room, including a
Gucci-upholstered dog bed in a sitting room. Passing through the kitchen, there was a small, granite-topped table maybe eight inches high. Two pewter dog dishes were fitted into precut holes in the granite. Geronimo kept his sharp brown eyes on Mars throughout the house tour, still cradled in Bunny’s arms. He watched Mars noticing his beds, his pewter dishes, and gave Mars a look that made clear that touching anything that belonged to Geronimo would be a mistake.
Bunny led Mars to a separate wing at the opposite end of the house from Phillipe’s room. Her bedroom walls, carpet, and bedding were shades of pearl grey. The room’s centerpiece was an elegant wood headboard behind the bed, crosscut to show a distinctive grain.
Bunny stared at the bed. “So sad to have lost the walnut trees.” She looked up at Mars, an impish expression on her face. “This was the only thing worth havin’ I got from my husband. He had this bed made for me as a wedding gift. Gave me hope, it did. Thought when he gave it to me that maybe marryin’ him wasn’t such a big mistake after all. Two months after the wedding, I figured out that confusin’ good taste and good character was a mistake. Kept the bed, divorced the man.”
“You’ve not remarried?” Mars said.
“Oh, my, no. No need these days, is there? Besides, I just don’t trust my judgment in men for a minute.” She bent her head down and kissed the dachshund’s head. “Geronimo excepted, of course. Perfect little gentleman …”
Phillipe said, “Unless, of course, one leaves Brie cheese unattended … .”
“Don’t bring that up,” Bunny said. “Darlin’ G has only just got his tummy back in order after he ate that hunk of Brie at my last show in the gallery. A tiny tendency toward gluttony aside, I’ve been happier with Geronimo than I ever was married. My husband was as much a right-winger as Hec. And they were best friends. The first—but not the last—big clue I missed. Only true difference was, my husband didn’t have Hec’s money.”
Mars gave it some thought. “Your husband still around?”
“Lord, no. Can’t say where he got to …” Bunny’s face knotted up a bit. “I assume he’s still alive, but truth is, I wouldn’t know if he wasn’t. He left Richmond after the divorce, which was—oh, do I even want to say? Twenty years ago at least. Last I heard, he was out in Phoenix on some land development deal.”
As he left, Mars took out a business card, stopping to scribble his home phone below the Homicide Division number. He handed Bunny his card. “Call me if you have any second thoughts about someone who might have been involved with Hec.”
Bunny glanced at the card, then dropped it on a silver tray on a hall table. She held her hand out to Mars and said, “So now you go on over to the ‘right’ side of Cary Street Road. Let me tell you somethin’. Rattlesnakes and cottonmouths come up from the river on that side. Cause no end of trouble. They can’t make it across the traffic on Cary Street Road. One of our many advantages. You just be careful over there, is what I’m saying.”