Savannah Scarlett

by Becky Lee Weyrich

  On the taxi ride home, Mary Scarlett kept thinking about what Dr. Schlager had said about Bolt’s high-powered new client. A man of stature he might be, but unless her senses had failed her, she was almost sure that thumping, grinding beat in the background could only be the musical accompaniment to a strip show. She would reserve judgment on Mr. R. A. Tollison until she met him for herself.

  Fourteen

  While Mary Scarlett slipped under Dr. Schlager’s hypnotic spell, Bolt paced his office. Tollison was late for his appointment. That should have been Bolt’s first tipoff.

  When Mr. Radley Axel Tollison III finally did show up, Bolt damned himself for not canceling or postponing in order to go with Mary Scarlett to Schlager’s. Either his secretary had failed to emphasize “the Third” on the end of his name, or Bolt, preoccupied, had simply missed it.

  Conrad had expected to meet with the father, R. A. Tollison, Jr., a high-powered Georgia businessman and politician from Sea Island. Instead, he got the son, obviously a SCAD student by his purple-spiked hair and the plethora of studs, hoops, and satanic symbols poking through his ears and nose. Not until the pale, bone-thin student sauntered into the office twenty-eight minutes late and said, “The name’s ‘Rat,’” did Bolt note that his tongue, too, was pierced to accommodate a small gold ring.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Tollison.” Bolt swallowed his revulsion and tried to sound business-like.

  The kid flopped in the chair opposite Bolt’s desk and slouched down on his backbone. Bolt wondered what Rat’s rich, powerful father thought of his son’s ragbag wardrobe—tom jeans, ripped tank top, runover high-tops, all black and smeared with paint. Bolt tried to conjure up a picture of this alien-looking young man entering the Spanish Lounge at The Cloister with his prominent parents for an afternoon tea dance. No way!

  “How can I help you, Mr. Tollison?”

  Rat wriggled around in his chair, as uncomfortable as if he were on the witness stand in court, but trying to appear nonchalant. He draped one leg—knee protruding from a foot-long tear in his jeans—over the arm of the chair before he said, “Hey, I gotta problem, man.”

  You’ve got that right kid! Bolt thought. Aloud he said, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “Yeah, I guess. That’s why I’m here. I gotta tell somebody. It’s buggin’ the hell outta me, man. I’ve never been in a mess like this.”

  Bolt figured it must be something serious—probably trouble at school. The Savannah College of Art and Design had had problems with some of its students over the past years, most notably the pair who had decided to experiment with bomb-building in their spare time.

  “You go to SCAD, right?” Bolt prompted.

  The kid brushed a hand through his purple hair and gave a quick, humorless laugh. “How’d you guess? But that’s got nothing to do with my problems. Well, almost nothing. I met her at SCAD.”

  Bolt nodded. A girl, then. Pregnant? Wanting to get married, but not up to Dad’s standards? Needing funds for an abortion?

  “I came to you ‘cause I know you’re not on my old man’s payroll. I don’t want this getting back to him.” The kid leaned close and glared at Bolt. “You got that, Conrad?”

  Bolt hadn’t liked this kid on sight. And he was liking him less and less as the minutes ticked by.

  “You don’t have to worry about client confidentiality, Mr. Tollison. That goes without saying.”

  “Okay! Just so we got that straight.”

  Bolt’s thoughts wandered to Mary Scarlett. If Rat didn’t get to the point soon, he was going to toss him out on his pierced ear and rush over to Dr. Schlager’s. Right now the kid was rambling on about his girlfriend and how good she was in bed and how much she’d taught him about love and life and blah, blah, blah.

  The word that drew Bolt’s thoughts back to his client was murder. He sat up straighter and gave young Mr. Tollison his full attention.

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” Bolt said, snatching up his pen to make notes. “You met this woman, Magnolia, when she was posing for a life class at SCAD? You moved in with her when you got kicked out of your apartment for not paying your rent?” He looked skeptically at Tollison, imagining the palatial “cottage” on Sea Island where his parents lived and where he must have been raised, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  “You’re figuring my old man has enough money so I don’t have to worry about funds—right?”

  Bolt nodded.

  “Well, the bastard keeps me on such a tight allowance that I don’t have money to buy toilet paper to wipe my ass. If I called and told him I’d run out of funds, I’d get the usual lecture and he’d figure I’d blown all my cash on drugs.”

  Bolt didn’t ask, but the quizzical look on his face must have told the kid he wanted to know if that was the case.

  “It’s none of your damn business what I do with my money, man. But just so’s you know, I been holding back rent so I could pay a lawyer. Is it gonna be you?”

  Bolt only stared at Rat, not yet ready to commit.

  “See, the problem is, I’ve got to find out something. Can I get in trouble for just knowing about a murder even if I had nothing to do with it?”

  “This woman—Magnolia—was she involved?”

  “Naw. ’Nolia’s a nice lady. She’s just got lousy taste in men.”

  Bolt had to agree. She’d allowed this young punk to move in with her and taken him as her lover, hadn’t she?

  “If she wasn’t directly involved, how does she know about this murder? Why did she tell you about it?”

  Rat uttered a frustrated sigh, as if to indicate that Bolt was a total bonehead. “I told you, man, my lady’s a big time boozer. She gets in these moods when she’s on the sauce. She’ll laugh till you think she’s going to have a stroke or something, then she’ll start in on a crying jag. Once she gets all weepy, that’s when she talks. For hours she’ll go on and on about this rich dude she used to hang with and how he was crazy about her and how they ran off from Savannah together and how he left his old lady and his kid.” Rat paused and chuckled. “’Nolia, she’s always saying, ‘Rat honey, I was hot stuff back then. You shoulda seen me.’” He leaned forward and gave Bolt a wink and a crooked grin. “I’m here to tell you, boss, she’s still hot stuff!”

  “How old is this woman?” Bolt asked, trying to fit dates to Tollison’s weird tale.

  The kid shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. She’s old—maybe thirty-five, forty. She’s been around the block a time or two. That’s for damn sure!”

  “And exactly when did this murder take place? Where? Who was the victim?”

  “Man, don’t bug me,” Rat whined. “You want the details, go talk to ’Nolia. All I wanna know is can I get in deep shit for knowing what I know?”

  “You could,” Bolt answered evenly. “It all depends.”

  “Oh, ma-a-an!” he groaned. “Depends on what?”

  “I can’t say until I know more about the case. Maybe this woman is just jerking you around. Maybe she made the whole thing up. Or maybe she just saw something and imagined she had witnessed a murder.”

  Rat leaned forward, propping one elbow on Bolt’s desk. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Listen, Conrad, she ain’t making nothing up.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “’Cause I checked her facts, that’s how. I figured, just like you, that it was the booze talking. So I went to the library and did me some research. I looked back through old newspapers until I found it. There ain’t no doubt. Everything ’Nolia told me was right on target Only difference was that nobody called it murder. Papers said the old broad got likkered-up and fell over the banister of her stairs. Broke her neck when she hit the deck.”

  Bolt shot to his feet, then turned to gaze out the window, trying to cover his reaction to Tollison’s words. “Do you know the victim’s name?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Yeah, I know it. What’
s it to you?”

  Bolt ground his teeth at the teenager’s insolent tone. He turned slowly, his face set in a threatening scowl. “The question is, Mr. Tollison: What s it to you? ”

  “I don’t getcha. Can’t you just answer a simple question? I thought that’s what lawyers do.”

  “What I do is protect my clients. If you wish to be my client, you’ll have to tell me everything, Mr. Tollison.”

  “Awright! Awright! Her name was Mrs. Richard Habersham Lamar.”

  “Miss Lucy?”

  “Yeah, that’s what ’Nolia said folks called her. You know who I mean?”

  Bolt nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, like I said, her husband ran off with Magnolia, only back then she wasn’t using that stage name. She was just plain Jenny Flower, a cocktail waitress at the Moon River Pub. They took off one night after Lamar spread the word that he was going on a fishing trip. He hoped people would figure when he didn’t come home that his boat sank and he was fish food. I guess everybody pretty much went along with that ’cause nobody came looking for him. He and ’Nolia were real careful just in case. They took off in her old car until they could get far enough away from Savannah to sell it and buy a new one. Big Dick had plenty of money, she said. They went all over—New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco. They lived the high life till his cash started running out. Then he got this idea. He said he could get money in Savannah, if they were careful not to let anybody see them while they were in town. So they sneaked back one night and went to his house.”

  “Why on earth would they do that?” Bolt asked.

  “’Nolia said Big Dick told her he had cash hidden somewhere at his house. He figured he could slip in on the maid’s day off and get the money while his wife was sleeping and she’d never lpiow he was there. They ran into a couple of problems, though. The money was gone and his wife was awake. She heard him out in the upstairs hall and came charging out of her room, swinging a bottle of brandy like a club. ’Nolia said—she was watching downstairs at the front door—that Big Dick picked up his wife and just tossed her over the railing like a sack of potatoes.”

  “Good God,” Bolt muttered, visualizing the scene.

  “’Nolia got hysterical—started screaming her head off. That’s when Big Dick ran downstairs and slugged her to shut her up. The next she knew, they were back in the car, heading out of Savannah. And she said he’d piled all this junk from the house in the backseat.”

  “What kind of junk?” Bolt asked.

  “Aw, I don’t know. Stuff he could pawn. Silver, jewelry, some paintings, she said.”

  “Did Magnolia mention an antique mirror?”

  Rat squenched his eyes up, thinking. “Not that I recall, but you’d have to ask her.”

  “Yes. That’s what I should do. Where can I find Magnolia?”

  The kid grinned. “That’s easy, man. Where’ve you been? She’s the star at the Blue Note, that nightclub out near Pooler. She’s an exotic dancer and she’s good, I’m telling you.”

  Pooler was a small community on the outskirts of the city. The Blue Note was a new one on Bolt. As for Magnolia the stripper, the star’s fame had not reached beyond her rural milieu.

  Bolt’s thoughts turned back to Miss Lucy’s murderer. “What happened to Dick Lamar?”

  Tollison shook his head. “’Nolia ditched him the first chance she got. She said she wasn’t sticking with any guy who knocked her around, no matter how much money he had. She was scared, too, that the cops would come after him once they found his dead wife. ’Nolia figured they might arrest her as his accomplice. She figured Big Dick wouldn’t dare show his face again around Savannah, so she hightailed it back here. She’s been here ever since.”

  “I have to talk to her. As soon as possible.”

  “Right now’s as good a time as any, but I better go with you,” Rat suggested. “If a strange guy comes sniffing around, she’s sure to think you’re the law or somebody Big Dick sent looking for her. She’s real squirrelly about that Keeps a little pistol on her all the time, just in case.”

  “Then, by all means, come along, Mr. Tollison.”

  The Blue Note was a grungy little dive out near the airport, far off the city’s well-worn tourist route. Nor was it one of the “in” places with the upper crust of Savannah society. One side of the cinder block duplex featured a smiling winged pig-angel “BAR-B-Q Made In Heaven,” while the other half of the building had dirty windows outlined in blue neon and its name glowing over the bright blue door. It was early yet, but the happy hour crowd had already gathered. The unpaved, pot-holed parking lot was lined with muddy pickup trucks, one eighteen-wheeler, and a couple of mean-looking Harleys.

  “Man, I’d like me one of them hogs!” Rat said, drooling over the shiny bikes.

  “Where do we find Magnolia?” Bolt asked, sliding out of the CRX into a twilight filled with the aromas of hickory smoke, basted pork, mud, gasoline, and beer.

  “There’s a door to her dressing room around back. But she ought to be doing her first show by now. Let’s just go in the front way and catch the rest of it.”

  Bolt gave his client a quick glance. “Are you old enough to get in there?”

  “Ma-a-an!” Rat groaned. “They don’t even card me. These fellows know I’m ’Nolia’s guy.”

  Tollison was wrong—not about getting carded, but about ’Nolia’s show. She hadn’t come on stage yet. The gloomy club—its smoky, cobwebby walls decorated with beer signs and girlie posters—was populated by blue-collar types in plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, along with the two bikers, who stood out in the crowd in their black leather, chains, and studs. Not if he had tried could Bolt have looked more out of place in his three-piece suit and conservative tie.

  The owner-bartender, Pinky, a barrel of a man with a tangle of black beard, gave Rat a high-five and yelled over the blaring country music, “She’s in back. Go talk to her, kid. This ain’t one of her better nights.”

  Bolt nodded self-consciously to the men they passed, most of whom simply offered him surly stares, then went back to their beers. Ahead of him, Rat slipped through a black curtain that led to the back of the club. Bolt followed.

  The restrooms on the right were marked “Dudes” and “Babes.” To the left was a storage room and then Magnolia’s “dressing room,” not much larger than a broom closet.

  When Bolt reached the open door, Rat was leaning over his lady love, whispering something. She sat slumped forward in a bent folding chair, her elbow on a packing crate that doubled as a table and her forehead resting against the palm of her left hand. Bolt couldn’t see her face for the riot of electric-blue curls that tumbled to her shoulders. A cigarette burned in an overflowing ashtray on the table beside a lipstick-smeared glass and a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels.

  “I don’t wanna see nobody, Rat,” she moaned as Bolt came within earshot. “It ain’t been a good day. That guy called again.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to talk to Mr. Conrad here, honey.” Rat motioned toward Bolt. “He’s gonna help you. He’ll make sure the bum leaves you alone.”

  Still sniffling and whimpering, ‘Nolia dragged the damp blue curls out of her eyes and looked up at Bolt. He was surprised to see that she was truly a beauty. What age had robbed from her looks, artfully applied makeup had restored. She looked Italian—almond-shaped eyes as blue as her wig, black batwing eyebrows, and full pouting lips tinted blood-red. When she turned toward him, he glimpsed the deep cleavage between her breasts above the open V of her flowered kimono.

  “Is that true?” She drilled Bolt with her ice-blue eyes. “You can really keep this creep from bugging me?”

  “I’ll do my best, ma’am, but you’ll have to tell me everything about the problems you’re having with him.”

  She shot a glance at Rat. “You little pissant! You told, didn’t you?”

  “’Nolia honey, I had to. You can’t go on looking over your shoulder the rest of your lif
e. It’s driving you crazy.”

  She snorted a laugh and took a slug of bourbon. “I must have been crazy to spill my guts to you, kid. It’s a wonder you didn’t run right home and tell Daddy.”

  “You know I’d never do that, sweetie.” Rat reached out to stroke her shoulder, but she shrugged away from his touch. “Come on, baby, tell Mr. Conrad so he can help. He’s my lawyer, so he’s honor-bound not to go to the cops or anything.”

  She looked Bolt up and down, then threw back her head and laughed. “A lawyer? God, Rat, what’d you have to do to hire a guy like this—pawn the family jewels?”

  When she reached for the bottle again, Bolt decided he had better step in before she got too drunk to talk. “Miss Magnolia, hear me out. Please.”

  His ploy worked. Her hand stopped just short of gripping the bottle. He had her attention.

  “Mr. Tollison came to me because he is deeply concerned for your safety and for his own. If Richard Lamar truly murdered his wife—”

  “Ain’t no if about it, mister! I was there. I seen the whole damn thing, start to finish. He said if I ever blabbed, he’d do the same to me. Rat—running around, shooting off his mouth—is going to get me killed.”

  “How do you know Lamar is still alive?” Bolt asked.

  “’Cause he’s got this guy who calls me now and again, just to remind me that I should keep my trap shut.”

  “This is the man who called you today?”

  She nodded. “That’s him! Only today he upped the ante. He claimed Big Dick needs money. He gave me a post office box in Marietta where I’m supposed to send the cash. Like I had five hundred dollars! Ha!” She slumped down and hid her face in her crossed arms. “So I guess he’ll kill me and that’ll be an end to it.”

  Rat patted her shoulder clumsily. “No, honey. Don’t say such a thing.”

  “Do you know this man’s name?” Bolt asked.