Dead Man Walker

by Duffy Brown

My back connected with a doorknob. If it was locked I was dead meat, and visions of old men with big loaded shotguns flashed through my brain. Clive and Crenshaw just might not believe I was here for a business-only house call. Anna’s eyes got beady, and there was a sneer on Bella’s lips. “You don’t think we’re good enough for the likes of you, is that it?”

  “You’re fine. Terrific. Is a half hour up yet?” I held my breath, turned the doorknob, and went weak with relief when it opened. I slipped outside, hightailing it around to the street. Crowds of tourists with maps and cameras never looked so good.

  I jumped into the Chevy, not even bothering to open the door. I sucked in a deep steadying breath then headed for my office over on Columbia Square, ecstatic at the thought of going to work. I kept one eye on the traffic and one on my rearview mirror, watching for male octogenarians with loaded weaponry coming after me. I parked the Chevy and climbed the stone steps to my office. Mondays and me never got along and after this morning, I gave serious thought to tearing all the Mondays off the calendar for the rest of the year.

  “Where have you been?” Dinky yelped, scrambling from behind her desk as I walked in. Like any good secretary she thrust a wad of notepaper at me. “Mercedes wanted to know if you were here yet and something about the marines. Steffy Lou Adkins can meet for a few minutes tomorrow morning at the Plantation Club to talk about the theater fund-raiser but as you might expect the poor girl’s in a complete tizzy over her father-in-law being dead as a fence post.” Dinky stopped with the notes and cut her eyes in my direction. “You? The Plantation Club?”

  “Steffy Lou’s a member.”

  “There’s something else you’re not saying and nothing good’s coming from it. For Pete’s sake wear a jacket, it’s the rules, and try real hard not to deck anyone, there’s not enough in petty cash right now to go bailing you out.” Dinky made the sign of the cross and flipped to the next note.

  “Detective Ross called saying she’s throwing you in the clink if you stole her last doughnut, and you’re due in court in fifteen minutes to get Sister Mary Louise out of another speeding ticket. Lead Foot Louise is trying to get to heaven the fast way if you ask me.”

  “Do we have any coffee brewed up?”

  “Pot’s full.”

  Sexist or not I gave Dinky a kiss on the cheek. She’d been with me for five years, saved my recently pinched butt more times than I could count, and seemed to have an in with the man upstairs.

  I took care of business, and by seven I’d had enough of Monday and headed for Abe’s on Lincoln, the dive watering hole of Savannah regulars. The place had low ceilings, wood tables, smoky jazz, and a well-stocked bar. I decided to hoof it there since parking was a nightmare at this time of night and a red vintage convertible a moving target that even Anna and Bella’s husbands couldn’t miss. I took Habersham and cut through Warren Square, the dim lamplight peeking through the trees and moss swaying in the breeze.

  “Dawg,” Big Joey said to me as I slipped onto a stool next to his, everyone in the place giving Big Joey space. “Know you’d show.” Big Joey was built like a Mack truck, muscles buffed to jet black, gold tooth, ponytail, the main man of the Seventeenth Street gang . . . my former home and forever family. He was my brother in every sense of the word except parental commonality.

  “Not exactly your hood,” I said to Big Joey as Bobby Lee put down a fresh beer in front of him without being asked, and poured my usual bourbon, the slim bottle and Woodford label catching my eye. Adkins and I didn’t have much in common, heck we had nothing in common except mutual dislike, Mercedes, and an appreciation for fine drink.

  “Things blew up at Adkins’s, you in the mix,” Joey said, his voice low and blending into the surrounding chatter. “One mean dude. Deep pockets, always up in your grill dishing dirt. I’m smellin’ trouble. You cool?”

  “Aw, you’re worried about me.” I grinned over the rim of my glass.

  Big Joey didn’t grin back. “Bad vibes about that guy for as long as I can remember. I got your back, bro.” He took a gulp of beer then slid off his seat. His hand rested heavy on my shoulder, his intense black eyes meeting mine. Only time I’d seen Joey like this was when I thought about dropping out of law school and he threatened to beat my ass. “Ya got my digits,” he said. “Use ’em when you need ’em.”

  “Hey, you’re worked up for nothing,” I said to him. “Conway’s gone, out of my life. We had a few run-ins but it’s over.”

  “Negative, kemosabe. Later.”

  I had good street instincts, but Big Joey’s were better. That he had a bad feeling about Conway dead got my attention. But why? I was hunting Conway’s killer but I wasn’t involved on a personal level. I’d been in much tougher places than this. Heck, this was business as usual.

  * * *

  “Well, I do declare the world is coming to a complete and total end,” Steffy Lou Adkins wailed early the next morning as she glided over to sit down beside me on the leather couch at the Plantation Club. Stained glass windows at the far end turned the gray carpet blue and gold, and the brass chandelier in the center sparkled. The old English bar in the corner was an understated focal point, and heavy chairs, tables, and leather couches made the area a perfect meeting place for the rich and notables to be seen by other rich and notables.

  Steffy Lou smoothed her black mourning dress that showed enough leg and cleavage to keep the gossips cackling for the rest of the week. She ordered a cappuccino from a blonde waitress in a white ruffled apron who looked familiar even though I wasn’t a member of the club and . . . and—

  Reagan! I sloshed my coffee onto the table in front of me nearly knocking over a vase of fresh flowers. I gave Reagan a what the heck are you doing here look. She gave me a keep your mouth shut look in return. Why would Reagan be at the Plantation Club of all places?

  “Are you all right, Walker dear,” Steffy Lou asked. “You’re looking kind of peaked this morning, like you met up with something that didn’t quite agree with you.”

  “You have no idea.” I sighed, dragging myself back to Steffy Lou and our meeting. Steffy Lou was thirty-something and bound for Broadway till Tucker Adkins proposed right there in the middle of the Atlanta airport. The big rock on her finger and the fact that Tucker had just purchased the Hampton Lillibridge House, ghosts and all, might have had something to do with Steffy Lou saying yes. Ghosts in Savannah were never a deterrent to buying property but viewed more as cranky extended family that didn’t pay taxes.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to Steffy Lou. I put down my cup and took her hand.

  Steffy Lou whipped her notebook from her purse. “Oh, there’s no need to be fretting today, I didn’t lose my notes after all, everything’s right in here.”

  It might be Tuesday but it was still acting like Monday. “Uh, Conway? Between the eyes? Eternal Slumber?”

  “Lordy me.” Steffy Lou blinked a few times. “That loss, of course. I keep trying to forget about this awful occurrence is all, can’t believe it’s true.” Steffy Lou dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief that cost more than my shirt. “Why anyone would go and hurt Daddy Conway I’ll never understand,” she sniveled. “He truly was the dearest man on this here Earth, treating me like the daughter he never had, bless his heart.”

  “Are you still going to sell his dining room set and living room couch?” Reagan said as she handed Steffy Lou her cappuccino. “I can get a good price.”

  “Pardon me?” Steffy blinked a few times and stared at the Prissy Fox consignment shop business card Reagan shoved in her hand. I mouthed Get lost to Reagan. She stuck her tongue out at me then strutted off.

  “I simply don’t know how we’ll get though this,” Steffy Lou whimpered then blew her nose, underscoring her distress. “When I finally reached Tucker out in California the poor man cried and carried on something terrible right there on the phone. The help’s working their
fingers to the bone getting Lillibridge ready for receiving people paying their respects, and I’m picking Tucker up at the airport in an hour.”

  “A true hardship.”

  “Oh my, yes indeed.” Steffy Lou put away her handkerchief and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, now that we got that out of the way we need to get on with the benefit.”

  “It can wait till next week.”

  “Honey.” Steffy Lou grabbed my arm. “It’s saving the theater we’re talking about, live performances, audiences clapping and cheering, and bouquets of flowers.” She batted her eyes and got a faraway look. “I just love the cheering and flowers.”

  “And Conway would have wanted you to carry on as usual,” I added.

  “Well, of course. It’s our civic duty, and we are pillars of the Savannah community after all. People will be flying in from all over to pay their respects.” Steffy Lou crossed her legs that had to reach clear to her armpits and she flipped open her notebook complete with colored tabs and an index. “Let’s see now, you’ve got all the legal work in order and the ticket sales are due to start up next week. All the merchants on Tybee are selling them. Red, white, and blue is the color scheme and Sundae Cafe is doing their delicious fried chicken, sweet potato fries, fried okra, and key lime pie.”

  “Think that’s too much fried?”

  Steffy Lou’s jaw dropped. “Bless my soul, Walker Boone, it’s that Dr. Oz Show influence that’s trickled down here and done gotten to you. It’s a big old Yankee conspiracy, if you ask me, to go and ruin the South. Besides, okra’s a vegetable and lime’s fruit, so what more could anyone want?”

  “My apologies.”

  “Accepted. And since I just saved us all from that toxic Northern influence we can now get to the best part of all.” She crossed her legs in the other direction and fluffed her hair. “There seem to be three spots left in the talent show and I’ll be filling in out of the goodness of my little old heart. I got the songs picked out and new dresses ordered. Don’t you just love that Barbra Streisand song ‘People’?”

  “More than life itself.”

  Steffy Lou cleared her throat, sat up straighter, and started to hum. The hum got louder, then she sang a few words before bursting into full song right there on the spot, everyone in the club room staring. People clapped, Steffy Lou stood, bowed, and snagged the vase of white hydrangeas off the coffee table. She clutched them to her breasts and looked pleased as Southern punch.

  Steffy Lou and her flowers pranced off to comfort the grieving Tucker at the airport, and I finished my coffee, wondering if anyone really cared that Conway Adkins was on a slab over at the Slumber.

  “Why are you still here?” Reagan stage-whispered to me, pad and pencil poised as if taking an order. She had her hair pinned up and looked efficient in her black-and-white uniform.

  “Nice outfit.”

  “It’s a little small.” Reagan wiggled to get a better fit, popping the top button on the uniform, exposing a touch of cleavage.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Auntie KiKi’s minding the shop so I can fill in for a friend and . . . and pick up a little extra cash to send Bruce Willis to doggie day care. It’s the in thing to do in case you didn’t know and I don’t want him to feel left out. He could get a complex and need therapy.”

  I sat back in my leather chair and laughed. “You’d take a bullet to the heart rather then trust anyone else with BW. Is that really the best story you can come up with? Therapy?”

  “Well, if you must know, I didn’t exactly expect to see you but the KiKi part is true enough and my guess is you’re here to get the skinny on VP Mason Dixon.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  Reagan leaned closer. “KiKi told me about the letter of discontent found under the desk at you-know-who’s house. Seems to me like the second big kahuna floating around here wants to be the main man.”

  “Miss.” It was second kahuna Mason Dixon himself signaling to Reagan from two tables over. “We’d like to order.”

  And that we part included none other than Grayden Russell. Okay, what was this all about? Russell was new to town, and he wasn’t here to sample the crab cakes. What was this guy up to and how did Mason Dixon fit in?

  “Don’t you dare do anything without me,” Reagan whispered. “There’s more going on here at the club than a secret handshake.” Reagan hurried over to the table, and I watched as she scribbled the orders. When she headed to the bar to drop it off I walked over to Russell.

  Something was going on with Russell and with Dixon and the best way to get information was to shake things up. I might be a lawyer but I didn’t belong here. I belonged to a street gang; didn’t even own a tie; and had the pedigree of a mutt with no father and a runaway mother, and was raised by Grandma Hilly on the wrong side of the tracks. All that was worth at least a tremor or two around here.

  Chapter Four

  “Give any more thought to those spoons?” I said to Russell when I drew up to his table.

  “Mr. Boone, you’re a member here.” Russell didn’t even try to fake a smile. I was off to a good start in the shaking department.

  Mason Dixon looked down his vice-president nose at me. He was really good at it. “Mr. Boone is not a member. He’s Steffy Lou Adkins’s guest.” Dixon glared. “Miss Adkins has left the club so perhaps you, Mr. Boone, should leave. I don’t know how you got in here in the first place with those jeans, they are strictly forbidden.”

  “Hey, I got a jacket.” I held up the corner of my lapel.

  “Isn’t Steffy Lou Adkins heading up the Tybee Island theater committee?” Russell said as if the idea just came to him. Yeah, right. “Perhaps she’d be more interested than you are, Mr. Boone, in garnering support for my business proposal to buy the theater and restorie it? In fact, I’m thinking you’re a man in the way.”

  “As he is now,” Dixon added. “You need to leave, Boone. You’re upsetting a potential club member and I won’t have that. Perhaps we should call the police.”

  “I don’t even get a ‘mister’ this time?” I asked.

  “Get out,” Dixon hissed.

  “Just so you know,” I said to Russell. “The Tybee Island theater project is Steffy Lou’s idea, not mine. I just push around the legal papers and pick up doughnuts for the meetings. Good luck with that garnering.”

  I walked out the door and into the wood-paneled hallway adorned with pictures of old plantations and Southern generals. With Dixon schmoozing Russell over crab cakes and Bloody Marys I had time to poke around, I hoped, because Dixon would make sure I never got back in this place again. So, just how much did Dixon want this presidency? The kudzu vine seemed to think Dixon wanted it bad, but why? Prestige? Power? Seemed a stretch to kill for a title, but as an attorney in the great city of Savannah I knew better than to ignore the kudzu vine. Maybe there was another reason Dixon wanted Adkins gone.

  The first floor held the social and dining rooms. Private meeting rooms, cigar room, brandy room were on the second floor, leaving the president and vice-president offices to the third. I passed by the red-carpeted main staircase and the small elevator and took the service stairway at the back.

  The third floor was deserted, dust motes catching the morning sun drifting in through the clearstory windows. The mahogany door marked “President’s Office” was locked and had a wreath of lilies and greenery crossed with a black sash.

  The “Vice President” door opened when I turned the knob. No secretary stood guard so I slipped inside. There was one window to the back, a big ornate desk in the middle, a matching chair, and something coming right at my head. I ducked, swerved, wrenched a stapler from the attacker, and easily flattened him against the wall. Uh, make that flattened her against the wall.

  “Steffy Lou?” I backed up, giving her some space. “What happened to getting Tucker at the airport?”

&n
bsp; She leaned against a chair catching her breath, hand pressed to her heart. “You scared the daylights right out of me, Walker.”

  “Ditto. What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I know this sounds crazy,” she said between gasps. “But I’ve heard talk and the more I think about it I truly believe Mason Dixon just might have had something to do with Conway’s death. I saw him come into the club room when I was leaving, so I figured I had a few minutes to look around.” Steffy Lou gave me a weak smile. “I thought you were Dixon, not that you look like him, of course. I figured if I could knock him silly I could sneak out.”

  The smile wobbled and a tear slid down her cheek. “I’m not exactly the mourning kind and don’t know quite how to handle it and I know I’m not doing a real good job at looking sad and weepy, but I simply cannot believe the man’s gone. Everyone thinks I’m a singing airhead and maybe I am but the thing is, Conway was always right nice to me. I’ve heard the talk that Dixon wants to be president of the club and Tucker said Dixon owed Conway a boatload of money. The way I see it, Dixon getting rid of Conway solved two big old problems for him. If I could find the gun Dixon used on Conway I could nail the no-good, stinking jackass.” Steffy Lou kicked the desk, putting a scuff in the old cherry wood then she smoothed back her hair and raised her chin. “So, why are you here?”

  “Getting a membership application.” Holy freaking cow, Steffy Lou was looking for the gun! “You’ve been through a lot,” I said to Steffy Lou. “You have a funeral to arrange, family things to tend to. You need to go home. I’ll look around here.”

  She gave me a hug. “I appreciate this, Walker, I truly do. Tucker will have a hissy if he has to take a cab from the airport and I’m already late.”

  “Tucker has hissies?”

  “Oh honey,” Steffy Lou patted my cheek. “His carrying on strips paint off walls.”

  I poked my head out the door to make sure the coast was clear then motioned for Steffy Lou. “Service steps are around the corner. If Dixon is our guy, you don’t want him to know you suspect him of anything. He’s killed once, he’ll do it again.”