“I’m looking for some land up here. What sold today?” she asked.
“Well, a couple of nice parcels.” Saunders had one of those genteel Southern voices that always made Sam feel like she should go back to finishing school.
“Ten cents on the dollar?”
“Depends on what you thought the dollar value was in the first place.” Saunders smiled.
They could go on like this all day. She was no match for these men, no match for anyone in Monroeville, for that matter. Though they might be friendly on the surface, they had more practice, generations of practice, at closemouthed horse-trading. She might as well go on home and figure out another approach.
“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Saunders said, moving toward the door.
“Me, too.” Sam stood.
“Hold up there, Miz Sloan,” said Dodd. “It’s not often we get visitors from the big city. Why don’t you sit and visit for a while?”
That was more like it. “Why, thanks.” She put her bag back down. “I’d be happy to.”
“Now, what’s a pretty lady like you doing up here alone looking for a tax auction?” Buford Dodd smiled. And then he stood up again, showing off his powerful body. His brown twill uniform fit as if it had been custom-tailored to his broad shoulders, his muscular thighs. He walked over to the open door and shut it firmly. “Coffee?”
Sam nodded.
“Sugar?” When he said the word, it sounded like its taste. He rolled it around on his tongue.
He brushed his hand against hers as he gave her the cup and was in no hurry to remove it. She was suddenly aware of being alone in the room with this man. She wondered if he’d locked the door when he closed it.
“Your husband too busy to make the trip?” He glanced pointedly at her unadorned left hand.
“The land will be in my name.”
But he was as tenacious as a well-trained coon dog. “Then you are married?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“I’m not.” He grinned.
Two could play that game. Sam looked openly at the wide gold band on his left hand.
“My wife is,” he said, and laughed.
Sam smiled only with the corners of her mouth and sipped her coffee. “So, do large parcels frequently come up for sale up here? My husband thinks that this is the county in which to buy. This and Pickens. He says values are going to be skyrocketing any day now, what with Atlanta growing so.”
“Could be,” Dodd said, sitting down on the edge of his desk, leaning just a little too close. “Course, we country boys wouldn’t know. We just hunt and fish. Leave the fancy work to the lawyers and real estate developers.”
It was the opening she’d been hoping for. “Speaking of lawyers, isn’t this the area where that lawyer, Forrest Ridley, was found?”
“Not far from here. On up the road a piece.”
“Appalachian Falls?”
“Apalachee. Guess you never been up there. You know Forrest Ridley?”
“No.” She shook her head. “My husband does. But I read about it in the paper. Must have been awful, to die like that.”
“I reckon after the first good lick on the head, you don’t know what’s happening. He looked like he took a few good ones.”
“You saw the body? Oh, I guess you would have.”
“Yep. We took him out of the water. Terrible accident. Brought him right in here.” He pointed toward a back room. “Not anything a lady like you ought to be thinking about. Ugly sight.”
Sam thought about Hoke’s line—the corpses, pieces of corpses, mushy things that used to be corpses that she’d seen. She remembered the body of a young San Francisco woman who had been a sculptor, until a maniac with an artistry of his own had cut out her heart with a very sharp knife. She’d seen several examples of that man’s handiwork, as carefully executed as if he were working on a series for a show.
“Yes,” she said. “But I would like to see the falls. I hear they’re quite pretty.”
“Beautiful.” He reached over and laid a massive hand on her arm. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a big hand. “I’m headed up that way today. Why don’t you let me drive you?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t.” Though she wanted to talk with Dodd further, she knew that she didn’t want to be alone with him in a car for a second.
“Why not?”
“I have my dog.” She gestured in the direction where she was parked.
“I like dogs. Raise bulldogs myself.”
“Actually, I’m not coming back this way. I’m going to drive over into Pickens County. Thanks anyway.”
“More land you’re interested in over there?”
“Yes, near Tate.” She stood.
“Well, if you’re ever up here again,” he said, squeezing her arm, “I hope you’ll come by and say hidey.”
“Why, thank you. And thank you for the coffee.” She smiled back at him. “You needn’t show me out. Thanks for the hospitality, Sheriff Dodd.”
*
Dodd stood watching out his window as she opened her car door and took the excited little white dog into her arms. Then he called back behind his shoulder to the deputy who had earlier made the joke about the dog being Chinese.
“You make her, Early?”
“Yep. Frank and I just got the goddamned computer to work. Samantha Adams. Reporter. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Car’s in her name.”
“Married?”
“Single.”
“Bitch.” When Buford Dodd squinted as he was doing now, he looked very scary. He hitched up his gunbelt. “I thought so.”
Fourteen
Sam had been awake since Harpo had padded in at six-thirty and gently leaned his front paws against the bed. Lying there staring out at the trees for a half hour, she’d been thinking about how creepy it had felt, standing up at the top of Apalachee Falls. She was trying to imagine what Forrest Ridley’s last moments had been like. She tried the scenario first in the daytime, then at night. The latter was infinitely more terrifying.
She grabbed the phone on its first ring.
“What?” she asked.
“What? What kind of greeting is what?”
“The kind of greeting that someone deserves who has the gall to call someone at”—she reached for the clock and peered at it—“seven o’clock in the morning. This is a nasty habit you’ve developed.”
“You’ve already been up for a while,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I saw you get up and go into the bathroom.”
“What!”
“Remember that old telescope I used to have up here in my room? Mom has preserved everything. It’s like a monument to my youth.”
“I’m reporting you to the AMA!”
“You’re still looking good, Sammy.” He laughed. “Still looking very good.”
“Swine!” She pulled the sheet up over her naked body, then wrapped the top sheet around her like a toga, stepped over to the window, and pulled the long curtains. Then she went back to the phone.
“Boo!” Beau said. “Hiss! Boo!”
“What do you want, anyway?”
“God,” he sighed, “don’t ask me that.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait! We’ve got thousands of prints.”
She said nothing.
“From the Virginia Circle house.”
Nothing.
“A few of them yours.”
Zero.
“The remainder belong to…are you ready?”
Zilch.
“Forrest Ridley and Totsie Kay.”
“Hot damn! How do you know?”
“Well, Ridley’s we were expecting, of course, but Totsie’s we traced with the computer. She’d been printed because she’s press.”
“Of course. Totsie Kay. Jesus! He’s old enough to be her father. And besides which…”
“Yep. Good clean prints throughout the house. In the bathroom. On the sheets.”
“You printed the sheets?”
“Sure. Comes in real handy in rape cases. But I doubt very seriously that Ridley was raping her.”
“Jeest! Totsie Kay. I can’t get over it. She’s friends with his daughter. He knew her when she was a little girl—he knew her parents before she was born.” Sam paused. “So what does this mean? You think Queen found out and pushed him off the falls? Does that make sense?”
“Beats me. You’re the dick.”
“Let me remind you that I am not a private investigator. I am an investigative reporter, and you, my good Dr. Talbot, are a Peeping Tom.”
“I thought you’d forgive me when I gave you the news.”
“What about the surprise party note?”
“Nothing yet. We’re still working on it.”
“Then get back to work.”
*
The second phone call came fifteen minutes later. It was from Cutting, Sam’s San Francisco tracker.
“Campton Place,” he said. “The man liked to eat well in the restaurant downstairs. The name of his very young, very blond lady friend was Totsie Kay. She didn’t register that way, of course.”
“Thanks,” said Sam. “You’re a quarter of an hour late.”
“And twenty years too old and one hundred pounds too fat. You going to hold all that against me, Cookie-face?”
“Love you, Cutting,” she said, and signed off.
*
“I stopped by last night,” Liza was saying, “to have dinner with Queen. When I came in, she was yelling at someone on the phone.”
“And?” asked Sam. She had waited until after breakfast to check in with Ridley’s daughter, which she did almost every day.
“It sounded just like a fight with my father. ‘I don’t want you to be late,’ she said. ‘I want you there. Now.’”
“Any ideas?”
“Nope. Lona doesn’t know either. She said no men have come to the house. Just telephone calls. Though she said sometimes when she leaves, in the early evening, Queen is getting all dressed up to go out.” She hesitated. “What’s up, Sam?”
Sam put her off with a noncommittal answer. She wasn’t going to tell Liza that her beloved father had been having an affair with one of her friends. She knew Liza didn’t want to hear that. Though sooner rather than later, she was going to hear that and more—Sam felt it in her bones.
*
“Sure, I can meet you,” said Totsie. “But weren’t you coming over this evening to my parents’ house? Dad said you wanted us all to be there to talk about Forrest Ridley.”
“I did. I do. But there are a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about. Is right after work okay for you? Let’s say, Walter Mitty’s about six?”
“Sure,” Totsie said, though she sounded a little uncertain. “Then we can go from there to the house.”
*
Mitty’s was filled with prosperous young Atlantans drinking Perrier and white wine, though Sam noticed that vodka seemed to be once again on the rise. The crowd fit all the stereotypes and acronyms: yuppies, dinks, sinks, and preppies. Someone once had told her that Atlanta was the Lacoste capital of the world, and this afternoon she believed it. On one young man she’d spied four visible alligators, and she’d bet good money that if she could get a look at his underwear, he’d total an even half-dozen.
Totsie hesitated in the doorway, frowning around the crowded room. What a pretty girl, Sam thought. No wonder Forrest Ridley was tempted. She waved, and Totsie flashed her smile, glittering white.
“So,” Totsie asked even before settling her rear into the chair. “What did you want to know?”
“Whoa. Going to a fire? Let’s order you a drink first. You look like you could use one.” Sam flagged down the waiter. “Long day?” She turned back to Totsie, leaned a little closer, and took a deep breath. She thought she smelled the remnants of this morning’s Chanel No. 5.
“They’re all long when you first start, aren’t they? I mean, it’s slowly beginning to dawn on me that it’s the people who make all the money who jet off to Paris. It’s the young grinds like me who stay home and do the work.”
Sam laughed. “Paying your dues, I think it’s called. Learning the ropes.”
They talked about television newscasting for a while, small talk, chitchat.
“So,” Totsie repeated after her vodka and tonic arrived from the bar, “what did you want to know?” The young woman was obviously in a hurry to get this conversation on the road.
Sam led her gently, just as she’d planned, keeping it all nice and easy. She got Totsie to talk about growing up with Liza Ridley, the summers at Tate, the overnights at Lake Lanier, what it was like to be Simmons & Lee tykes.
“I don’t quite understand,” Totsie said finally, when Sam had picked up the check and they were walking out the door. “I thought you wanted to talk with me about Forrest. Aren’t you doing a profile on Forrest Ridley? That’s what Daddy said.”
“Well, this is all background, you know. Oh.” Sam struck herself lightly on the forehead. “I almost forgot. I found some old pictures that I thought I’d like to use, and I wanted you to help me identify the people in them, but I left them in my car. Do you mind walking to it?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m afraid it’s a little way away. I couldn’t find a parking place. This neighborhood has really become something, hasn’t it? It’s better than it ever was when I was growing up.”
Then Sam began chatting about famous people she’d met in her travels. When she dropped the name of Jane Pauley, she thought Totsie was going to faint.
On and on she went about Pauley, which wasn’t hard because Totsie had a million questions—which was exactly what Sam had counted on when she’d planned this little stroll. The younger woman was so engrossed that she lost all her earlier hesitation and, more importantly, didn’t pay any attention to where they were going. They’d turned right off Greenwood onto Barnett, and in just a few more steps they’d be on Virginia Circle. Two doors up was Totsie and Forrest Ridley’s secret pied-à-terre. One door. Zero.
“Here we are,” Sam announced.
Totsie looked at her, glanced at the car, then stared beyond it at the house. One hand fluttered to her mouth like a loopy white butterfly.
Sam took a deep breath and closed the net. “You want to tell me about it?”
They sat together in the car. Totsie talked and cried, and Sam listened and handed her tissues.
“It happened, I don’t know how. He is—was—old enough to be my father. But he was a wonderful man.” She turned to Sam with eyes pleading for understanding. “He was really someone special.”
Sam nodded.
“I know what we were doing was wrong. But he was so miserable at home…and when we were together, it didn’t seem wrong. Do you know what I mean?”
God, who didn’t? But when they were Totsie’s age, they thought they’d invented it all—sex, drugs, temptation. Each generation thinks it invented the whole ball of wax.
“We talked about everything. We shared everything. We were perfect together.” A freshet poured down her face, and with it went the last of her mascara.
Sam decided to take a flier. “Did you share with Forrest your knowledge of your father’s land deals up in Watkin County?” she asked.
Totsie jerked back as if she’d been slapped.
“I guess the answer’s yes,” Sam said, then pushed onward, hoping she was on a roll. “Did you tell your father that you’d told Ridley?”
“Of course not!”
“Your father doesn’t know about your relationship with Forrest Ridley?”
“No. It would kill him,” Totsie choked out.
“It must have been very complicated for you, your father and Forrest being old friends and partners and all. What did Forrest say when you told him about your father using your name on deeds?”
“He was very upset. He…oh, it was just awful. All of a sudden he was investigating Daddy’s dealings
inside the firm. He said he thought Daddy’d been up to something, that he was using it as shelter, to launder funds.”
“Was there that much money?”
Totsie grew very quiet. Sam looked closely to see if she was still breathing.
“Forrest said there was millions. That there was something going on even more than land.” Once again her voice rose. “It was terrible! If only I’d kept my big mouth shut. Everything was so wonderful between us for a while. We had great times together. We took trips. We…” She gestured at the little house, and her voice broke. “Then I ruined it all. Forrest was obsessed with finding out what was going on up in Monroeville. With my daddy!” She fumbled at the car door. Suddenly it had all become too much for her. “Let me out. I want to go home!”
“You’re too upset to drive. I’ll take you.”
“No! I can drive myself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” Totsie took a deep breath, chest out. “I can take care of myself.”
Sam doubted that. But on second thought, maybe she could. Totsie was an interesting combination of peaches and steel.
“Okay,” Sam agreed. But she wasn’t letting Totsie out of her sight. “I’ll take you to your car. Then I’ll follow you.”
Totsie wheeled. “Why? Haven’t we talked enough?”
”We have a date with your parents. Have you forgotten?”
“You’re going to tell them, aren’t you?” Once again she was a little girl.
“I’m not going to tell them anything.”
“Not your job to snitch?”
“No.”
“That’s all this is to you, isn’t it? A job? A story?” Totsie’s spunk was back.
“No. No more than it would be only that for you if you were doing it for television. I really want to find out what happened to Forrest Ridley. Don’t you?”
Beside her, Totsie leaned her pretty head back against the leather upholstery and moaned.
Fifteen
“In that case, can we change our plans a bit?” Edison Kay spoke softly into the telephone in his library. “Instead of the usual place, why don’t you stop by here for a drink? She’ll be here any minute.”
First Kill All the Lawyers Page 13