J.D. was sipping her punch and nibbling at an oatmeal raison cookie as she talked with Ruth. “I enjoyed the discussion,” she said. “I’m going to read the book this week.”
“I think you’ll like it,” Ruth said.
“Tell me some more about the author. I’ve never met one.”
Ruth laughed. “I’ve met a number of them over the years, but trust me when I say they’re nothing special. Except for Liv. I met her when we worked at a library and we became friends. Over the last few years, after my husband and I moved here, I saw a lot less of her, but we stayed in contact with phone calls, emails, and regular visits. I knew she was working on a book, but she’d never talk about it other than to say it was a mystery. She sent me an advance reader’s copy, what they call an ARC, several months before it was published, and I was blown away at how good it was.”
“She never shared the manuscript with you?”
“No. She kept that all to herself.”
“I did know one author,” J.D. said, “but he wasn’t very good, and I never think of him as a writer. As far as I know, he never published anything. He was an intelligence officer I served with in Germany. Very bright, but couldn’t write worth a flip. He inundated me with his manuscripts though.” She laughed. “He’d write a couple of pages and bring them to me at the office. I never screwed up the courage to tell him he needed to pursue another hobby.”
“Liv never did that. She kept it all to herself until the book was ready to be published. She’d written two other books before this one. The books weren’t very successful, but she had fun writing them and she found an agent who proved to be worthwhile when Liv wrote Beholden. He got it to the right publisher and negotiated a top-dollar deal for her.”
“Do you write, Ruth?”
“Not really. Like a lot of our ladies, I scribble, but I don’t think anybody will ever publish my work.” She laughed. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
“Judy told me that a lot of you write and share your work with the others. Sort of a critique group.”
“Yes, but my writing is so bad I don’t even share it with my friends. The members usually write short stories of about three or four pages. They bring it in and we talk about it. Some of the work is pretty good, but some is just horrible. We all try to be kind in our criticisms.”
“Is anybody working on a book?”
“If they are, I’ve never seen it. I’ve got to run. Are you coming to our next meetng?”
“I hope so. Thanks for inviting me tonight.”
J.D. had noted Ruth’s quick exit when she had asked her if anyone was working on a novel. She hoped she hadn’t spooked the woman. Sometimes a fairly innocuous question bites too close to the bone and puts the person to whom it’s directed on guard. She’d have to be careful with this lady.
Judy Ferguson was standing across the room chatting with Kelly Gilbert. J.D. joined them. “Did you enjoy the discussion, Jade?” Kelly asked.
“I did. I can’t wait to read the book.”
“Have you read it, Judy?” Kelly asked.
“Yes. It’s a first-rate book.”
“Kelly,” J.D. said. “Do you know Ruth well?”
Kelly frowned. “Not well, and I don’t really trust her.”
“Why not?”
“She has a way of talking about people behind their backs, if you know what I mean. She gossips a lot.”
“What about her husband?”
“Never met him. I think he plays a lot of golf.”
“Keeps him away from her, I guess,” Judy said.
“You don’t like her either,” J.D. said.
“She’s all right, I guess,” Judy said. “I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. I’m going for more punch. I’ll be ready to leave whenever you are, Jade.”
“Kelly, do you know if anyone in the club is writing a book?”
“No. That doesn’t mean nobody’s working on one, but I’ve never heard anything about it.”
“It was nice meeting you, Kelly. Guess I better catch up with Judy. She’s my ride tonight.”
In the cart on the way home, Judy said, “Sorry for that slip about Ruth. Knowing what you told me about her just makes me want to rip her eyes out.”
“No harm, Judy. I doubt Kelly even paid attention to your comments.”
“Yeah, but if they get back to Ruth, she might begin to wonder if I know something I shouldn’t. I’ll be careful. Promise.”
CHAPTER 21
I DROVE SLOWLY along a street lined with elegant mansions set well back from the road. Well-kept lawns were shaded from the early afternoon sun by ancient oaks that partially obscured the houses. This was Buckhead, the very affluent neighborhood of Atlanta, the one where the old families lived with their fading glory and diminishing assets. They were the gentry, the remnants of the old aristocracy that grew out of the plantation culture of the antebellum South. They’d all be gone in a few years, their wealth dissipated into nothing by the birth rate of each succeeding generation, the money spent frivolously by descendants who did not earn it. The old English notion of primogeniture had its advantages.
Thursday morning had brought no better information on Olivia Lathom from Jock’s agency. Jock made the call at six a.m. as we drank our coffee and ate a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. “Sorry, podna,” he said as he hung up the phone. “They can’t find anything in the databases. They asked if I wanted to send field agents out to see what we could dig up, but I didn’t think that was a workable proposition.”
“It’s not. I shouldn’t be calling on your agency to help with my investigation at all, and certainly not asking you to send agents out to help. There’s probably a limit to what your boss will put up with.”
“Probably.”
“I think I’ll get my tired old butt to Atlanta and see what I can turn up. Can you get me hard copies of what your geeks did find on Olivia?”
“It’s on my computer. I’ll print it out for you.”
I called my trusty travel agent, a guy I’d gone to high school with who had just retired from the Florida Highway Patrol as a major and set up a travel agency. He got me on a plane out of Tampa at ten o’clock. That would give me time to get a rental car and drive to Buckhead by a little after noon.
Everything ran on time. I had a pleasant flight, a drive that wasn’t too bad by Atlanta standards, and a leisurely lunch in a chain restaurant in a Buckhead shopping area. I ate and went over my notes and the printouts Jock had provided. I left the restaurant and began my search for Olivia Lathom’s trail among the luxurious mansions that were the heart of Buckhead.
This was the neighborhood where, according to what Ruth Bergstrom had told J.D., Olivia Lathom was born and where she had lived until she left for college. It was a place that cossetted its young from the world at large, protected them from the daily travails visited upon the middle class, and sent them out into a world for which they were woefully unprepared. I suspected that the only middle-class man living in any of the mansions of this sprawling oasis was the Georgia governor, whose official mansion graced West Paces Ferry Road on the periphery of Buckhead.
As a young Army officer stationed briefly at Ft. McPherson on the southwestern edge of Atlanta, I had visited the Buckhead home of a friend, another young officer who, like me, was awaiting shipment to the war zone. His family had lived in the same house for several generations, and he, in turn, would inherit the name and the house and live out his life ensconced in luxury.
They were gracious people who welcomed me as if I were one of them. I felt like an imposter. I was a self-conscious young man who had worked his way through college with the help of an Army ROTC scholarship, which I would repay by leading a group of other young men in combat. I was shipping out the next day to take command of a Special Forces team, a unit of the storied Green Berets that was heavily engaged in combat. I knew the statistics. The death rate among new lieutenants in combat was astronomically high. Yet, my memory of that evening was not the fear of
the coming war, but the fear of using the wrong fork and embarrassing myself and, probably, my friend and his family.
I was completely out of my depth that evening but, as far as I know, I didn’t pick up the wrong piece of silverware or slurp my soup. I had watched closely to see what they did before I reached for a fork or spoon. If any of them noticed my subterfuge, they were too well bred to mention it.
After that night, I never saw those pleasant people again. Their son left for the war zone soon after I did, and on his third day in combat, he was shot through the head by a sniper and died instantly. I wrote his parents a letter of condolence, but never heard back from them. I survived and their son didn’t. The war had exacted a heavier price from those genteel Southerners than it had from me. I came home with some bad memories and a gut full of shrapnel. They lost their only child. Their family line ended in an uninhabitable desert on the far side of the world.
I found the address I was looking for. The house was antebellum in its architecture and was probably built in the 1930s. It had obviously been updated. There was nothing of the decaying look that so many of the truly pre–Civil War homes sprinkled around the South wore with such despair.
Olivia’s family had apparently gone the way of many of the gentry who had lived here. Their money slowly faded away and they were left only with a name that opened a lot of doors. But an old name didn’t pay for the upkeep of the house or vacations in Europe with their friends. The Fulton County property records told me that the Lathoms had sold the house thirty years before and that the buyers still lived there.
I pulled into the wide circular drive and parked in front of the house. An older black woman wearing a black uniform dress with a white collar answered the door. “May I help you, sir?” she asked.
“My name is Matt Royal. I’m a lawyer down in Longboat Key, Florida.” I handed her a business card to prove it. “I was in the neighborhood and I was hoping that either Mr. or Mrs. Halstead might be available for a short conversation.”
“May I tell Mrs. Halstead what this is about?”
I was beginning to wonder if maybe I should have appeared hat in hand and knocked on the door to the servant’s entrance. “As I said, I’m a lawyer . . .”
“I understand that, sir.” Her voice was steely and practiced, as if she had to deal with uncouth interlopers on a daily basis. “What I need to know is why you need to see Mrs. Halstead.”
“It has to do with a murder and a claim against the property, which would probably end up with this house being owned by someone else, and more importantly with the end of your employment. If she can’t see me, I’ll just go on down to the Fulton County courthouse and get things started.” I lied a little. Well, maybe more than a little, but I can’t stand officious people.
“Wait here, please.” She shut the door in my face and left. Officious people always make dramatic exits.
After several minutes, a pleasant lady who was probably in her early seventies appeared. “Good afternoon, Mr. Royal. I’m Beth Halstead. Won’t you come in? I hope Sadie didn’t give you a hard time.” Her accent was one developed while growing up in the wealthier precincts of Atlanta. I wouldn’t be surprised it she was born and raised in Buckhead.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “She was very nice.”
Mrs. Halstead grinned. “I’m sure she was. She’s worked for us for a long time, since before we bought this house, and sometimes she’s a bit protective. Overly so, on occasion.”
She led me into a pleasant room at the back of the house. “I apologize for taking so long to get to the door. My husband, Steve, is a lawyer and I called him to see what I should do about talking to a Florida lawyer I’d never heard of, and who says we may have a problem with a murder and with ownership of our house.”
“I may have overstated the problem I’m here about. I just sort of added a property dispute to the conversation to focus Sadie’s attention. Actually, it’s only a murder I wanted to discuss with you.”
“That sounds more interesting than a property dispute. Anyway, my husband, the always cautious lawyer, put me on hold and called a colleague of his in Sarasota who told him you were the real thing, highly ethical, and that you were working on a murder case. He said you wouldn’t be here unless it was important.”
“I appreciate that, Mrs. Halstead,” I said, smiling. “But the question remains, can you trust the lawyer in Sarasota?”
She laughed. “I’ll take a chance. Would you like some iced tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well then, how can I help you?”
I told her about the murder of Olivia Lathom, that I represented the accused, Esther Higgins, and that I was trying to get some background information on the victim. “I don’t think my client killed her. If I can understand who Ms. Lathom was and what she did with her life, I may be able to figure out who killed her and why.”
“I don’t know how I can help you, Mr. Royal. I never met the woman.”
“The only connection I can see is that, according to the Fulton County property records, you and your husband bought this house from her parents.”
“We did buy it from the Lathoms. It was kind of sad. They were an old Atlanta family who had fallen on hard times. They had to get out from under the mortgage they carried on this house. They had let it fall into disrepair, so we got a good deal on it. But, I’m quite confident that they only had two children, and both of them were boys. Well, young men, really. They were both in their early thirties and one of them had a family of his own by then. The Lathoms were in their early seventies and were moving into a retirement community down in South Georgia somewhere. It was really sad.”
“Are you sure they didn’t have a daughter?”
“Positive. We got to know them pretty well, and met both their boys. They never mentioned a daughter.”
“Would you remember the boys’ names?”
“I don’t,” she said. “But I remember that they spelled their name with an ‘o’ instead of an ‘a.’ L-a-t-h-o-m. There used to be a radio executive here in Atlanta who spelled his name with an ‘o’, but there were very few others who spelled it the way they did. I wish I could be of more help.”
“Does the name Olivia Lathom mean anything at all to you?”
“It rings a vague bell, but I’m not sure from where.”
“She’s a mystery writer who lived here in Atlanta. She recently released a book that hit the New York Times best-seller list. I know she was written up in the Atlanta Constitution about four weeks ago.”
“Yes. That’s where I read that name. I remember she said she’d been raised in Buckhead and I wondered if she were related to the Lathoms who used to live in this house. Not a daughter, but maybe some other kind of relative.”
“I’ve done a lot of research on Olivia, and the Lathoms who lived in this house are the only ones who called Buckhead home during the years that she would have been growing up.”
“I wish I could help, Mr. Royal, but I can’t explain that unless she was living with someone with a different name. Maybe it was a coincidence that she had the same last name as the people who lived here and she was actually living somewhere else in the neighborhood.”
“You have been very helpful, Mrs. Halstead. You’ve also deepened the mystery. I got the impression she came from a wealthy family and the only Lathom I could find in the property records used to own this house. Maybe you’re right. Maybe someone else adopted her or took her to raise. But, without their names, I’m not likely to find Olivia’s trail.”
“I’m sure the Lathom couple we bought it from are dead by now. They’d be over a hundred years old if they were still alive. The boys must be at least in their sixties.”
I stood. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Halstead. I apologize for barging in on you like this, but I don’t have a lot of time before Esther’s trial starts.”
She walked me to the door. We passed the maid on the way out. “He didn’t look too savory to me, Miz Hal
stead,” she said, nodding at me. “I hope he didn’t bother you too much.”
“Not too much,” Mrs. Halstead said, smiling.
It’s been my experience that officious people often get the last word.
I had barely cleared the long driveway when my phone rang. I answered. It was Beth Halstead. “Mr. Royal, I mentioned your problem to Sadie and she remembered the boys’ names. Danny and Charles. Her mind is like a steel trap.”
I laughed. “So is her mouth, but please thank her for me.”
“I’ll do that.”
CHAPTER 22
THURSDAY MORNING IN The Villages was like most other days, except that in many neighborhoods, one of the house’s front yards was graced with plastic pink flamingos. J.D. and Judy traveled through several neighborhoods in Judy’s golf cart on their way to breakfast at the Evans Prairie Country Club and had seen a small flock of flamingos planted in yards in each village. Judy pointed out that a grouping of the birds was called a pat for some reason. The notice of the party had gone out overnight by email and the gaudy flamingos marked the location of the evening’s festivities in case anybody missed the memo. It was part ritual, part event, and mostly just a good time. The neighbors would gather and talk about things of little or no importance, but it was the ritual of friendships, new and old, that made it work. New neighbors did not stay strangers past their first driveway party.
After breakfast, J.D. called Sue Rapp, Esther’s next-door neighbor, and got a phone number for Patty Geoghegan. She called and identified herself and said, “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Patty.”
“Not at all, J.D. It’s wonderful hearing from you. I’ve been so worried about Esther.”
“Thank you. I’m sure she’s not guilty. You’ve met my friend Matt. He’s defending her.”
“I heard that. I understand he’s got a big reputation.”
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