‘What about that young man Justin? Why was he killed?’
‘Justin obviously put two and two together,’ Cab told her. ‘He connected Alison’s death to Deacon and realized that Lyle was the real target of the assassination on Labor Day. Justin must have started following Deacon, and that led him to the foreclosure house. After being inside, he probably guessed what Deacon was planning, but Deacon got to him before he could tell anyone.’
‘The real mystery is why, isn’t it?’ Diane asked. ‘Why did Deacon take it so far? Why kill me now?’
Cab nodded. ‘Yes, that’s the unanswered question. The FBI has been digging through his house and his computer records, but it doesn’t look like he left much of a trail regarding his motive. For now, they suspect he was afraid of being exposed for his role in the original murders.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Diane asked.
Cab rubbed his suntanned chin. ‘Oh, I’m sure that was part of it.’
‘But?’
‘But I think there’s more to the story,’ Cab said. ‘The police discovered something curious. About six months ago, Deacon visited Hamilton Brock in prison.’
‘Brock? Why?’
‘No one knows. Brock isn’t talking. He claims it’s another conspiracy theory aimed at pinning a murder charge on him.’
‘Are you suggesting that Deacon was secretly a member of the Liberty Empire Alliance?’
‘Well, there was nothing in his personal effects to suggest he was harboring a radical ideology, and it’s hard to believe he could have kept it hidden from Peach and others all this time. On the other hand, Deacon would have been a prime candidate for recruitment. An angry teenage boy. Parents dead. Disaffected. Maybe when he decided to kill his brother, he thought he could strike a blow for the Alliance by killing Birch, too.’
Diane looked thoughtful. ‘Do you think we’ll ever know the truth?’
‘The investigation will continue, but no one in the Alliance has an incentive to talk.’ He added: ‘What about you? I saw the headlines. I saw the crush of press outside. You’ve dropped out of the race.’
Diane nodded.
‘You’ve got a perfect excuse for doing so,’ Cab said, ‘after what you’ve been through.’
‘Yes, but I’m not interested in excuses. I did something wrong. I’ve hired an attorney to negotiate a plea to cover my actions involving Frank Macy. I imagine I may see some time in Club Fed. Or not, depending on whether they take mercy on a distraught mother.’
‘And on whether that bartender’s death in Pass-a-Grille was really a coincidence,’ Cab said. ‘Some of my friends in the police think you and Deacon planned the whole thing to bring Frank Macy down.’
‘I realize that. For what it’s worth, it’s not true. If Deacon killed him, he did it on his own, without telling me. I never would have been involved in murder.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Even so, this is the end of my public life. I’m out of politics. I’m resigning from the foundation, too. I told Tarla that she and I should take a long cruise somewhere, if I’m not playing solitaire in a women’s jail.’
‘She mentioned that. Somewhere with nubile brown men. She said once Garth is on his feet again, he could come along to apply the tanning butter.’
‘Oh, Tarla,’ Diane replied, shaking her head.
‘I guess this means Ramona Cortes will get what she’s always wanted,’ Cab went on. ‘With you out, it’s a two-person race for governor. She’s ahead in the polls. Everyone says she’s going to win.’
‘That’s what they say,’ Diane agreed. He saw a peculiar smile flit across her lips.
‘You don’t think so?’ Cab asked.
Diane went back to her tea, even though it was cold now. ‘I think the election is still four months away,’ she said. ‘Anything can happen.’
*
Walter Fleming nursed his Budweiser, which he drank from a long-necked bottle. The union boss had half a dozen more bottles soaking in ice in a silver bucket beside his deck chair. The blistering noon sun turned his high forehead pink. He wore an ugly yellow-striped bathing suit that he’d owned for years. His flip-flops lay in the sand at his feet. He wore black Ray-Bans that looked a lot like the sunglasses his father wore in the 1950s. Everything old was new again.
He sat in the sand behind his retirement home, which was near Carrabelle on the panhandle. The ground was flat, and the water hardly moved. A few teenagers splashed in the water, but this place was too boring for most of the kids. He spent weekends here with his wife. She lived in the house permanently, while Walter spent his weekdays in Tallahassee and in union halls around the state.
It was Monday, but he didn’t feel like working. He was in a foul mood. His mood didn’t get better when he saw Ogden Bush strolling toward him from the deck of his house. Ogden wore a dress suit and a fedora, which made him stand out like a politician shaking hands at a state fair. His black skin glowed with sweat, but he sported a cool grin, which nothing ever erased. He had a tan envelope scrunched in one of his slim hands.
Bush took off his hat and wiped his bald head. He stood on the beach, admiring the girls in the surf. ‘Aren’t you worried about skin cancer, Walter?’
‘You’re the only mole that bothers me, Ogden,’ Walter replied.
Bush chuckled. ‘Funny. That’s funny.’
Walter took a swig of beer and wiped his beard with his sweaty forearm. Beside him, Bush settled into an empty chair. Without being asked, the political spy grabbed one of Walter’s beers from the icy bucket, twisted off the cap, and drank half of it in a single swallow.
‘Quiet around here,’ Bush said. ‘You really want to retire in this place? It would drive me crazy.’
‘I like quiet. I don’t get much of it.’
Both men finished their beers in silence. Walter flicked at a bee that buzzed around his head. His lips drooped downward in a perpetual frown.
‘You look like Grumpy Cat, Walter,’ Bush told him. ‘What’s with the gloom and doom?’
Walter dropped his empty bottle in the bucket. ‘You’ve seen the polls?’
‘Sure. They suck.’
‘They suck all right. The Governor got no bump from the smooth response to Chayla. All the headlines have gone to Ramona Cortes talking about law and order and political corruption. She sits there and lumps the Governor’s scandal in with the Common Way shit like it’s a symptom of some bigger problem, and the national media eat it up. She’s up ten points. Ten.’
‘Cheer up,’ Ogden told him. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
Walter stripped off his sunglasses and jabbed them at Bush. ‘See, that’s what I hate about consultants. It’s all a game to you. You win some, you lose some. At the end of the day, you don’t care. Me, I think about a right-winger like Ramona Cortes sitting in the governor’s office, and it makes me sick. It’s a fricking disaster.’
‘You’d rather Diane Fairmont?’ he asked.
‘Between the two of them? Yeah, I’d take Diane over Ramona, but that’s not going to happen.’
‘Nope,’ Bush agreed. ‘Diane’s toast. She managed to look noble stepping down, though. People see her as a victim again. Lots of sympathy.’
Walter snorted. ‘So what are you doing here, Ogden? You need a job?’
Bush shrugged. ‘Yeah, kinda ironic, huh? Diane’s out, so am I.’
‘We’re not hiring.’
‘No? We’ve got a deal, Walter. I expect you to live up to it. I kept my end of the bargain. I was your spy.’
‘A spy who couldn’t deliver,’ Walter snapped.
‘Oh, don’t be so sure. You’re going to want to see what I brought you. Of course, if you’d prefer, I can simply burn it, and you can spend the next four years dealing with Governor Cortes.’
Walter’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’
Bush waved the tan envelope in the air. ‘I have a little parting gift from our friends at Common Way.’
‘Like
what?’
‘Like a nuclear bomb,’ Bush said.
Walter frowned. ‘What is it? Where did you get it?’
‘It showed up on my desk. I don’t know who left it there, but I can guess. Fact is, I think they suspected my divided loyalties. As for what it is – well, see for yourself.’
He handed the envelope to Walter, who dug out a pair of reading glasses from a canvas bag beside his deckchair. Walter undid the hook on the envelope and slid out a single sheet of paper. It was a copy of a ten-year-old invoice from an Orlando law firm, and the services rendered were described simply as ‘Consultation.’
Walter recognized the name of the firm. It was an old-line white-shoe law firm with political connections and a practice that spanned corporate and criminal matters. He also recognized the name of the man to whom the bill was addressed.
Lyle Piper.
‘What the hell is this?’ Walter asked.
‘Check out the date of the consultation.’
Walter did. The two-hour discussion between Lyle Piper and his lawyer took place a week before the Labor Day murders. ‘Okay, so? I’m being dense here, but I still don’t get it. It doesn’t look like a bombshell to me.’
‘Do the math, Walter,’ Bush told him. ‘Deacon Piper hit a girl in Lyle’s Mercedes and dragged her off the road and left her to die, right? His brother figured it out. So he consulted a criminal attorney, because he wanted Deacon to turn himself in. This is the invoice.’
‘Yeah, I know the story,’ Walter said.
‘Okay, but do you know who was a partner in criminal law at that Orlando firm ten years ago? And do you know who was also a friend of Lyle Piper’s going back to their law school days?’
Walter’s brow wrinkled in confusion, and then his confusion washed away like footsteps in the wet sand. He realized that Bush was right. The paper he was holding in his hand was radioactive. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he murmured. ‘Ramona Cortes.’
Bush tapped his nose with his index finger. ‘You got it.’
Ramona Cortes.
Walter shook his head in disbelief. ‘She knew. She knew what Deacon Piper did to that girl. She knew it ten years ago.’
‘Yeah, pretty convenient, huh? Ramona had Deacon Piper’s whole life in her hands. One word from her, and he’d be behind bars for thirty years. Talk about having leverage over somebody.’
‘She’ll deny everything,’ Walter said. ‘The invoice doesn’t list her name. It doesn’t say anything about the nature of the consultation. We’ll never be able to prove that she was involved in the plot.’
Bush shrugged. ‘Who cares? Let her deny it all she wants. She’ll spend the next four months answering questions about what she knew and when she knew it. The allegation alone will destroy her.’
That was true. This piece of paper would change the race. Ramona would lose. The Governor would win.
Or would he?
‘Why would Common Way give this to you?’ Walter asked.
‘Obviously, they don’t want their fingerprints on it.’
‘So what’s their game? Nothing’s free with those slippery bastards.’
‘They don’t like Ramona. She’s out to destroy the foundation. If they can’t have Diane in Tallahassee, they’d rather see the Governor re-elected than a sworn enemy like Ramona.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ Walter said. ‘They’re up to something. They’re still trying to fix the race. You know what Ramona’s going to do if this comes out. She’ll throw it back in our faces and say this is another dirty trick from the Governor’s campaign. It’ll be ugly street warfare. That’s what Common Way wants, isn’t it? Let us pound each other for a few weeks, drive both of our numbers down, and then they step in and find a new candidate who vaults into the lead.’
‘Maybe so,’ Bush said, ‘but do we have a choice? Without this dirt, there’s no race at all. Ramona wins.’
Walter didn’t like being between a rock and a hard place. He liked being the rock, banging on everybody else. Even so, he couldn’t say no. He didn’t trust Common Way, but sometimes you had to give your enemies what they wanted and hope you could still screw them tomorrow. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said.
‘We go nuclear?’
‘We go nuclear,’ Walter agreed.
‘The roll-out has to be handled delicately,’ Bush told him. ‘It can’t come from any of our usual sources. We’ve got to stay ten miles away from this. Everybody will suspect it comes from us, but we can’t let anyone prove it.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Walter asked. ‘Don’t worry. I know guys. We’ll get the story planted. This thing will land like Pearl Harbor in Ramona’s camp.’
Ogden stood up and laced his hands behind his neck, relishing the sun. ‘Excellent. It’s always a pleasure doing business with you, Walter.’
Walter didn’t return the compliment. He studied the paper in his hand and took no pleasure in it. He was already anticipating the fallout, imagining the headlines, the press conferences, the claims and counter-claims. It would be a bloodbath, but elections usually were.
‘So what do you think, Ogden?’
‘About what?’
Walter nodded at the piece of paper. ‘You think Ramona really did this? She was ready to have Deacon Piper commit murder to put her in the governor’s chair? I can’t stand the lady, but I just wonder if it’s true.’
Bush’s lips folded into an amused smile. ‘Walter, you surprise me. This is politics. What the hell does truth have to do with anything?’
56
‘Hello, Alison.’
Peach stared at the little white cross that was pushed into the ground near the highway shoulder. Pink flowers decorated it. Someone had slung rosary beads around the cross. It wasn’t a grave, but if a ghost had to pick a place to haunt, this was a pretty spot. By all rights, Chayla should have unearthed the fragile memorial and trampled it, but God had made an exception for Alison. The cross had come through the storm unscathed.
She sat cross-legged in front of it. The ground was dry. Her Thunderbird was parked twenty yards away. A truck passed on the lonely highway, and the driver gave her a short toot of his horn. Paying respects.
Alison Garner. Fourteen years old. She was two years older than Peach had been that night, but two years was nothing.
‘My name is Peach,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me, but I was there. It was my brother who hit you. I mean, wherever you are, you probably already know that. I guess I knew it, too, but I never wanted to admit it to myself. It’s funny what the brain can do. Anyway, I wanted to say I’m sorry. You should have had a life, and you didn’t.’
Peach waited. She wasn’t expecting an answer, but it was polite to let your words sink in. She’d always done the same thing with her mannequins. Talk to them, and then let them think about it. Annalie – Lala – would have said she didn’t need to worry unless they started talking back.
‘I saw your parents,’ she went on. ‘They miss you a lot, but they seem happy. I was afraid they would yell at me or something, but they cried and hugged me, and I started crying, too. They said I should stay for dinner, but I didn’t want to impose. I asked to see some of your things, though. They still have a lot of them. You were a Britney fan, huh? I saw you had a concert program. She was never one of my favorites, but I could see where you would like her. They had a video of you, too, singing in church. You had a pretty voice. Me, I can’t sing at all.’
Peach looked up at the sky. Birds flitted and called to each other in the trees. A month had passed, and the storm was a fading memory.
‘I’ve been trying to decide whether my brother was a bad person,’ she went on. ‘I mean, I know he was. You probably hate him, right? It was weird talking to your parents, because I figured they would hate him, too, but they said Christians believe in forgiveness. They told me how sorry they were for me and how I must miss Deacon. They said they know how hard it is to lose someone you love, no matter how it happens. And the thing is, they’re right. I
do miss him. I still love him. I hope you won’t think badly of me for that.’
She brushed a tear from her eye. Another one followed, and then there were too many to wipe from her face, so she let them flow.
‘I hear you had a boyfriend. I saw a picture of you two going to a dance. Did he kiss you? Boys are funny about that when they’re young. I never had a boyfriend until this year, and he’s – well, he’s gone now. We kissed. We never did more than that, because it’s just not my thing. Sex just gets in the way. I liked kissing, though. I liked holding him and having him hold me. I miss him, too. I miss him a lot. I don’t know, sometimes I think it’s me. People who get close to me die. I don’t really have anyone now. Nobody’s left.’
Through her tears, she managed to laugh at herself. She’d never been a fan of self-pity. Things were what they were. Even so, here she was, with another imaginary friend. She was twenty-two years old, and she talked to mannequins and ghosts.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m making this all about me, when you’re the one who’s dead. Except, who knows, maybe you’re already back. Or I don’t know, maybe it takes a while. I think there are old souls and new souls. Do you know what I mean? Some people seem like they’ve been around for centuries even when they’re young. Justin was like that. Other people feel like this is their first go-round. Oh well, I don’t know. I probably sound crazy to you. Anyway, if you’re back, and you see me, give me a wink, okay? I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I quit my job. I’m sick of politics. But I’ll be around.’
Peach got up from the highway shoulder and brushed the dirt off her pants. She dug in her back pocket and pulled out a slim volume of poetry. It was the book she’d found in Justin’s safe house – the duplicate of the volume she’d given him of poetry by William Blake. She’d wrapped the book in plastic. She put it on the ground and propped it against the cross.
‘I don’t know how things work where you are,’ she said. ‘If you can read, I thought you might like this. If you see Justin, maybe he can read some of them to you. He was good at that.’
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