Saturday nights, James had a gin and tonic promptly at 5 P.M. He liked to take it on the back porch, looking out at the garden Bernadette had tended for so many years. Here, more than any other place in the house, he felt close to his mother. Her worn-out cotton mop still hung from a nail by the back door. Her gardening shoes, a pair of rubber-soled boots she’d cut the tops off of, stood companionably in the corner, toes pointing in, and the granite-ware dishpan she’d used to shell white-acre peas was placed upside down on a wobbly table beside his rocking chair.
He rocked and thought about the day’s events. Phipps Mayhew was not a man to cross. His anger was volcanic; his pockets deep. Faced with any kind of threat, he would strike back, and viciously.
James winced, thinking of Mayhew’s threat to make public his sexual orientation. Money was the least of his worries. He would be forced out of the closet. His family, old friends, would be shocked, disgusted, and feel betrayed. Not Weezie. Weezie knew and apparently accepted that aspect of his life. But the rest, how would they react?
He sipped his drink and weighed the issue. But no matter how he framed the question, the answer stayed the same. He would do what needed to be done. He would take the consequences as they came.
From inside the house he heard the quiet dinging of the doorbell. He picked up his drink and walked through the house to the foyer. He was expecting Weezie to come by to pick up her pocketbook. He opened the door.
Diane Mayhew stood on his porch in a silk party frock. Her flowery hat was gone, but she had a new accessory: a snub-nosed pistol.
“Hello, Father,” she said.
He stared down at the barrel of the gun.
“It’s a forty-five,” Diane said, seeing what he was looking at. “It’s loaded, and I know how to use it. May I come in, please?”
Inviting her inside seemed the thing to do.
“Now what?” James asked.
“Could we sit down?” she asked. “I’ve had these damned heels on all day. My calves are throbbing.”
He gestured toward the living room, whose picture windows faced Washington Avenue. The drapes were open. Maybe somebody would drive by and see Diane Mayhew holding him at gunpoint.
“Not here,” Diane said, reaching down and kneading the back of one leg. “Don’t you have a study or something?”
“Of course,” he said, pointing to the dining room. He ate all his meals in the kitchen, so he’d given his mother’s furniture to one of the nieces and moved in a desk and some bookshelves.
“This is nice,” Diane said, looking around the room. “This house is much bigger than it looks from the street. Did you do the decorating yourself?”
“Some of it,” he said, trying not to sound nervous.
“I like this paint color,” she said, running her free hand over the wall of the study. “What do you call it?”
“Brown,” James said.
Diane Mayhew, James thought, was unhinged. She was pointing a gun at him and asking him for decorating hints. It occurred to James that most of the women in Savannah he had contact with were, on some level, slightly deranged. Look at Marian, his sister-in-law. And Denise Cahoon. And Merijoy Rucker.
It could be hormones, he decided. Or maybe just the humidity.
“Sit right there, Father,” Diane was saying, pointing with her gun to one of the straight-backed chairs against the far wall. He did as he was told.
“What’s this about, Mrs. Mayhew?” he asked, keeping his voice low and nonconfrontational.
“I heard everything you said to Phipps in his study today,” Diane Mayhew said. “If you stand in the master bedroom upstairs, by the heat vent, you can hear every word spoken in the den. It’s really uncanny.”
James said, “I’m very sorry you had to hear it from me. I apologize.”
“I already knew he was cheating on me with that woman, Caroline DeSantos,” Diane said. “But you’ve got it all wrong. Phipps only fucked her.” She blushed slightly. “Excuse me, Father, I mean, he had sex with her. He never would have killed her. I’m the one who killed Caroline.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” James said calmly. “It must be devastating to find your husband is attracted to another woman. And Caroline DeSantos was not a nice person. A home wrecker, you might call her.”
“Exactly,” Diane said. “And to think, things might have gone on until it was too late, if I hadn’t been so worried about my boys.”
“Your boys?”
“Our sons. Phipps III, we call him Tripp, and Phillip. Flip. They’re teenagers, enrolled at Country Day, but I was afraid they were mixing with the wrong element.”
James nodded, understanding nothing.
“I found condoms in Tripp’s backpack. I begged Phipps to talk to the boys, but he said I was blowing things out of proportion. I decided to find out who the girls were.”
“A fine idea,” James said. He wondered how this had anything to do with why Diane Mayhew found it necessary to shoot Caroline DeSantos in the chest.
“I bought a taping device,” Diane went on. “A bug. And I put it on the boys’ phone. And every night I’d listen to their conversations.
“About a week after I bought the device, I heard Phipps. On the boys’ phone. I almost died. He was talking to a woman. Dirty talk! On my boys’ phone. What if they’d overheard him talking that smut talk?”
“Could be damaging to their self-esteem,” James murmured soothingly.
“He was talking to Caroline DeSantos,” Diane said, gritting her teeth as she said the name, “setting up meetings. She didn’t wear panties. Did you know that? Whenever she was going to meet him—no panties. I heard her telling him that on the phone. And that’s when I decided she had to die.”
“Very disturbing,” James agreed. Disturbed? She was a whack-job.
“Phipps was talking to a divorce lawyer too,” Diane said, tears welling up in her pale brown eyes. “I had to stop him from leaving. For the boys’ sake.”
“Mrs. Mayhew?” James said, leaning forward. “I think you should tell this story to a therapist I know. You’ve been under such stress.”
“No!” Diane screeched, raising the gun and pointing it at him again. “No therapist. You sound like Phipps.”
She swallowed. “Don’t waste your time trying that therapy crap on me, Father. The point of all this is, I killed Caroline. You figured it out, or came close, and now you’d like to blow the whistle on Phipps. But if you do that, you’ll ruin everything. We’ve spent millions putting this paper plant deal together. The financing is all laid out. But it’s all short-term, high interest. Any delay, and we’re wiped out. I can’t let that happen. I have my boys to think of.”
James nodded. “I understand.”
“Do you?” she said bitterly. “I doubt it. The planning that went into all this, the thought. It was masterful, if I do say so myself. I kept all the tapes of Phipps and Caroline’s phone calls. I got another tape recorder, and I cut bits and pieces of their conversation. And then I called Caroline’s office and waited until I got her answering machine. I played back a tape I’d made. It was Phipps’s voice, asking her to meet him out at Beaulieu. And that’s all it took.”
“Very clever,” James said.
“She went out to Beaulieu that night, thinking she and Phipps would have one more filthy little sex session,” Diane said. “But I got there first. I brought my own gun, but when I got to the house, I found the box with the dueling pistols. It was providence, really. Both pistols were loaded. I took one, fired it once into the wall, and it worked perfectly. After that, I hid in the upstairs bedroom. She came running up the stairs, calling his name. And I came out of the bedroom, and I shot her right in the chest. You should have seen the look on her face,” Diane said triumphantly. “You know, if she’d known she was going to die, I’ll bet she would have worn panties that night.”
“Mrs. Mayhew?” James felt tired. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”
Diane cocked her head and smiled. “You have to die. The children’s college money is at stake. And the Mayhew name. I can’t let anything interfere with that. Or with our marriage. You being a priest and all, you understand.”
“I’m not a priest anymore,” James said. He was fed up. “Your husband betrayed you, Mrs. Mayhew. Why don’t you take your anger out on him?”
“He’s a husband. And a father,” she said. “You’re just another gay man. There are thousands of your kind in Savannah. No wife, no kids. No big loss.”
“I have family here,” James said. “People who love me.”
“They don’t know you’re queer, do they?” she said pityingly.
“Don’t do this,” James said. “You’re a person with morals. Killing is immoral.”
She stood up suddenly. “I hate this godforsaken town. The minute the boys are out of high school, I’m packing up and leaving. She laughed. “Actually, ‘hate’ isn’t a strong enough word. I loathe this town. My God! The roaches. And the gnats. They gnaw on my skin until I bleed. And this obsession with being from Savannah. Have these people ever heard of Boston? Or Philadelphia? Those are seats of culture. And learning. Not this stinking bug-ridden swamp.
“And the rice!” she moaned, waving the gun around.
“Rice?”
“Rice,” she said, shuddering. “If anybody else serves me another dish of rice in this town, I think I’ll just die.”
She was standing very close to him, and the gun was pointed right at his chest. But James thought of an old joke. It was about how Savannahians are just like the Chinese—they both worship their ancestors and eat a lot of rice.
Diane’s breath was coming in short gasps now. Her hair was askew and her face was sheened with perspiration.
“You seem anxious,” James said.
“You think I like killing people?” she snapped. “This isn’t easy for me. I’m not a serial killer. I’m a woman at the end of my rope.”
“Would you like a cool drink?” he asked, crossing his fingers.
“Maybe a quick one. I need to get home before the boys get back from lacrosse practice.”
“I’ll just go in the kitchen and get you something,” James said.
“I’m right behind you, so don’t try anything funny,” Diane instructed, poking him in the small of the back with the barrel of her pistol.
“Some iced tea?” he asked when they were in the kitchen. “Or juice?”
She stood with her back to the kitchen door, taking shallow breaths. “I’m so tense,” she complained. “Really anxious. It wasn’t like this with Caroline. I was cool as a cucumber when I shot her. Walked out of the house, saw all those people driving up for the sale, and I just drove off like nothing happened. Maybe I’m anxious because of you being a priest.”
James’s own nerves were considerably frayed. His hands shook uncontrollably as he fumbled around in the cabinet, looking for a clean glass. And his eyes lit upon the pill bottle. Marian’s tranquilizers. Brand X.
“Let me fix you a glass of wine,” James said. “I have a nice Bordeaux.”
“Maybe just one glass. I have to keep a clear head. Don’t want to get pulled over by the cops while we’re out for our drive.”
“Our drive?” A chill ran down his spine. Reaching for the wineglass, he managed to palm the pill bottle in the same hand. He set the glass on the counter.
“Yes. I can’t very well shoot you here. I’ve been thinking about that swamp out at Beaulieu. There are alligators there. I’ve seen them sunning on the banks.”
“Let me see,” James said, squatting down in front of the lower cabinet and thrusting his torso inside. “That bottle is way at the back here.” It was actually in the front. But with his body nearly inside the cabinet, he managed to open the pill bottle and spill six tablets into his hand. Would they dissolve in the wine? He stood up, put the tablets on the counter and the bottle on top of them. James took the corkscrew out of the drawer and while lifting the cork, mashed the pills as hard as he could with the bottle bottom.
“I’ve been saving this wine for something special,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. “I guess this is as special as it’s going to get for me.”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. I’m a very good shot,” Diane said assuringly. “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing.”
He swept the crushed pills into the wineglass, then poured the Bordeaux on top of it. He swirled the glass lightly, watching with relief as the powder dissolved. The wine was still a little cloudy, however. Would she notice?
“Maybe you’d like some crackers?” he asked, ever the good host, tucking a paper napkin around the bowl of the glass in hopes of obscuring the cloudiness.
“Never mind that,” she said, snatching the wine out of his hand and taking a deep gulp.
“Would it be all right if I joined you?” James asked. He poured himself a glass, filled it to the rim. Maybe the alcohol would deaden the pain if Diane Mayhew wasn’t the shot she boasted of being.
Diane held the glass away from her face and frowned. “Did you say this was a Bordeaux?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Funny,” she said. “Usually I don’t like a Bordeaux so much. But this isn’t bad. What kind is it?”
“Georges DuBoeuf,” he said. “They had a special at Johnny Ganem’s back in the fall.” He handed her the cork. “Here. For your wine log.”
She tucked the cork in the pocket of her garden party dress. “Let’s go.”
“One more for the road?” he suggested, stalling now.
“Not for me. I’m driving.”
Still, she allowed him to pour himself another glass. He dawdled, sipping, disposing of the bottle, wiping the kitchen counters down, rinsing her empty glass out and placing it in the dish drainer. He took the damp dishrag and folded it precisely, laying it neatly on Bernadette’s towel bar on the back of the kitchen door.
She glanced down at her wristwatch. “OK, let’s get the lead out now. I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
His mind raced. “Could I have a last request?”
“No,” she snapped. “This is not the French Foreign Legion.”
“Please? My rosary. It was a gift from my late mother.”
“Get it,” she said. “And hurry up. My God. I should have just shot you when you opened the door and gotten it over with.”
The rosary was in the farthest corner of the house. It was a miracle he remembered where he’d put it. Diane tramped up the stairs behind him, down the hall to his mother’s old bedroom. He had to get a stepladder to reach the highest shelf of the closet. James took his own sweet time climbing the ladder, shuffling the cardboard boxes, taking down one, then another. The rosary was, as he knew it would be, in the last box on the shelf.
“Let’s go,” she screamed as he lifted it out of the box. “The gnats will be coming out of the marsh. I told you how I feel about gnats.”
How long? James wondered, dragging himself as slowly as he dared down the stairs. How long? he wondered, locking the back door, switching on the front porch light, locking the front door behind them, with Diane’s pistol poked in his side.
Her gleaming white Lincoln was parked in the driveway, behind his Mercedes. “Get in,” she said, pointing to the driver’s seat. Did he detect a slight slur in her speech?
“You drive. And don’t try anything funny, or I’ll put a bullet in your brain right here in your driveway.”
“All right,” James said. She stumbled a little as she rounded the back of the car. But then she opened the passenger-side door and slid inside.
He put the key in the ignition and turned it on. The dashboard lit up and a bell started dinging insistently. He looked over at Diane. Her head was lolled over on her shoulder. Her eyes were closed. She was snoring.
“Mrs. Mayhew?” he said gently. No answer. Her hands were in her lap, her facial muscles relaxed. He reached over and unbent her fingers from the pistol. “Sweet dreams, Diane,” he said. And he picked up her cell phone and dialed 911.