She sat up, turned toward Bolt, and let her robe fall open to show a blue sequined G-string. “Yeah, I know his name. I even know what he looks like. He came right to the club in Savannah where I was performing one time last year. That’s why I’m out here now in Pooler at the Blue Note. I figured I’d be harder to find. But he’s tracked me down again. His name’s Lumpkin Quincey and he looks like a ’possum—shaggy gray hair, big pointy nose, and little beady eyes.”
“What’s his connection with Richard Lamar?” Bolt asked.
’Nolia shook her head. “I’m not sure. Once he mentioned something about their college days together. Quincey don’t look like no university man to me, though.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Bolt commented, casting a glance at Rat.
“Yeah! You got that right. Looking at me, you’d never guess I was an honor graduate of Jones Business College down in Jacksonville, would you?”
“You’re a businesswoman,” Rat insisted.
She chucked him under the chin. “Right you are, honey boy!”
“When was the last time you saw Lamar?” Bolt persisted, determined to get the facts.
“The night I was holding a gun on him, threatening to blow his balls off if he made a move to stop me from leaving.” She smiled sweetly and twirled a gentian-colored curl around her finger.
“When and where was that?”
“About a week after he killed his wife. We were in a motel in Arab, Alabama. We’d been running for days, sort of zigzagging back and forth through Georgia, Florida, and Alabama since that night in Savannah. He wasn’t stopping for anything but gas. I’d run to the john, then grab a Dr. Pepper and a sandwich while he gassed up. He didn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t answer when I asked him where we were headed. He just kept muttering to himself, mostly things that didn’t make any sense, but every now and then I’d hear him say, ‘She’s not dead, just knocked out. Takes more than that to kill Lucy. Tough little bitch!’ Stuff like that. Then he’d look at me like he didn’t even see me, like I wasn’t right there with him in the car. My jaw was aching where he’d hit me. I was afraid it was broken, but I knew if I said anything he’d probably slug me again. I was half out of my mind I was so scared.” She broke down and had to pause to regain control.
“Just take it easy, Magnolia. Take your time, but you have to tell me what happened,” Bolt prodded gently.
“All of it?”
He nodded. “Everything.”
She swiped at her eyes and blew her nose. “Oh, God,” she sighed. “Where to begin?”
“How did you meet Big Dick?”
Magnolia stared in her mirror, a distant look in her eyes. Carefully, methodically, she began repairing her ruined makeup as she talked. The familiar ritual seemed to calm her.
“I wasn’t no kid,” she began. “I shoulda known better, but I’d just been dumped by a guy I was nuts about. It seemed like my whole world had come to an end. I guess you could say I was vulnerable when Big Dick walked into my life. I was working at a cheesy little joint down on River Street—singing some, but waiting tables mostly. My thirtieth birthday was coming up and with no guy and a lousy job I was feeling like I was over the hill. Then he came in one slow night. It was raining like all hell. My last table had just paid and left. The boss was talking about closing early. I was more than ready. The whole street was dead. I hadn’t even made cab fare that night, so I was going to have to walk home in the rain. I was feeling lower than a snake’s belly.
“When Big Dick walked in, he looked worse than I felt. He’s a big, good-looking man, but that night he looked like somebody who’d tried to drown himself, and couldn’t even do that right. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a double martini. I fixed it for him and kind of hung around. The boss was in the back, so it was just the two of us. I’ll never forget how he started the conversation. He threw down that first drink, then looked up at me and smiled. He lifted his empty glass to let me know to hit him again.
“While I was fixing him another one, he said, ‘You ever feel like the whole world’s a toilet and you’ve just been flushed?’ Well, that really tickled me. He’d hit the nail on the head.
“I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. I’d been trying to think all night how it was I was feeling. Then he walks in and puts my whole life into those few words. I felt a little better. I realized all of a sudden that my face wasn’t frozen in a scowl. I grinned back at him and said, ‘Mister, I know exactly what you mean. And you know that commercial on TV—the little guy in his boat in the toilet bowl?’ He nodded that he knew the one I meant. Then I says, ‘Well, it’s a damn lie! There ain’t no boat!’
“He threw back his head and just filled up that gloomy place with his big old laugh. That sound made me feel good all over. I guess it’ll come as no surprise to you that he drove me home after closing Mid stayed most of that long, rainy night.”
’Nolia paused again to outline her full lips with quick, precise strokes. Her hands seemed steady enough, but Bolt noticed a twitch at the corner of her mouth. She was fighting for control again.
She spotted Bolt staring at her reflection in the mirror. “Don’t worry. I’m holding it together. I’ll tell you the whole story. But I got a show to do and those boys out there aren’t gonna wait all night.”
“Want me to go tell Pinky you’ll be ready in a few minutes?”
She turned a brilliant smile on her eager young lover. “You do that, Rat honey. And tell the guys I’ll give ‘em a special show since I’ve kept them waiting so long.”
Magnolia waited until Tollison left the room before she continued. “Dick Lamar and me, we hit it off right from the start. We crawled in the sack together that night, I’m not denying it. But there was a lot more to our relationship. He’d spend hours telling me about his stuck-up, ditzy wife and his kid who hated his guts. I’d be real nice to him, trying to let him know that not everybody was as bad as them. And in trying to help his feelings, I helped my own. It felt real good to be needed for a change. Before then, I’d always been the taker instead of the giver. I used to think it would be the most wonderful thing in the world if him and me could just chuck it all and run off together. So when he suggested that very thing, I had my bags packed in an hour.
“We hit the road with no looking back. Had a ball, too! New York, Vegas, San Francisco, and all points in between. He showed me places I’d never hoped to see. But then the money ran out. He’d started out with a bundle and a wallet full of credit cards. He hadn’t thought about the fact that dead men can’t use plastic. See, he’d told everybody that he was going on a fishing trip. The only other person who knew he wasn’t fishing was his buddy Quincey. He took out the boat Dick had rented, sank it, then came back in a small boat he’d towed out. A bad nor’easter blew in the next day so that helped the story along. The whole town figured him for dead—lost in the storm.”
Bolt nodded. He remembered that time well—the search and recovery boats, the divers, and Miss Lucy, popping tranquilizers and washing them down with brandy—half out of her mind with Mary Scarlett gone and Big Dick “missing at sea.”
“Tell me about the night the two of you came back to Savannah.”
Magnolia sort of moaned before the sound became words. “I’ve tried so hard to forget that night. There’s no way. Dick told me the maid was always gone on Sundays and we could sneak in the house and get a wad of cash he had hidden in a wall safe in his bedroom. So we drove into Savannah a little before midnight and he parked the car around back, off the street. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost his house key, but they kept one hidden on the front porch, under a heavy planter.”
Bolt nodded. He knew the place, had used that very key.
“I wanted to stay in the car. He said no, that he needed me to watch the front door just in case somebody showed up. I went inside with him and stayed downstairs in the foyer. Things went just like clockwork at first. His wife was in her room—sleeping, we figured—and there wasn’t
a soul in the rest of the house. It seemed like everything would be all right. He tiptoed up the stairs and into his room. I was nervous as a cat, especially after he disappeared upstairs. Finally, I heard a sound—maybe a board creaking, I don’t know—but when I looked up he was at the head of the stairs, starting down. I knew, though, that something was wrong. His face was fishbelly-white. Then—God A ‘mighty!—you never heard such a sound. It was like some demon from hell got loose. I saw the blur of white coming at Dick—she was all over him. He grabbed her arms and just picked her up like she didn’t weigh nothing. I started screaming when he dumped her over the railing. I couldn’t stop. It was like I was watching her fall and fall and fall in slow motion. I even remember her looking right at me with that startled expression on her face as she fell. It was almost like she was saying, ‘Well, who are you and what are you doing in my house and why don’t you catch me before I hit the floor and break my neck?’”
Magnolia paused to take a deep, gasping breath.
“And then?” Bolt said almost whispering.
“I was still screaming when she hit the floor right in front of me. I was just frozen where I stood, yelling my fool head off. I never saw Big Dick coming at me, not till I saw his fist in my face. He hit me a good solid shot to the chin. If that wasn’t enough to put my lights out, I must have hit my head on the door frame from the force of his punch. The next thing I knew, I woke up groaning. I felt like I was the one he’d tossed over the banister. My whole body hurt, but my jaw and my head mostly. It was still dark. I couldn’t tell where we were, but I knew we were miles from Savannah. I tried talking to him. He wouldn’t say a word, just hunched over the wheel with his face angry and all green from the dashboard lights, looking like something out of a horror movie. The next couple of days were just a blur. I was hurting real bad, and it was raining—hour after hour, all gray with fog and rain. Oh, another thing— he’d hauled off a bunch of stuff from the house on Bull Street.”
“What kind of stuff?” Bolt asked.
“Anything he could grab fast and pawn faster. Silver, some small paintings, jewelry, even a set of golf clubs. Whenever we passed through some little town that had a pawn shop, he’d stop and take something in, then come back a few minutes later with some cash.”
“Do you remember an antique mirror?”
Magnolia thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t recall anything like that Seems like he grabbed mostly small stuff that wouldn’t break.”
“Go on,” Bolt instructed. “Tell me how you got away from him.”
“Well, finally, when he’d pawned everything, he pulled into a cheap motel in Arab, Alabama. I wasn’t sure how far we were from Savannah, but I could tell he was heading north. He’d driven by a fried chicken place and bought us a family-sized bucket. Man, that was the best food! I hadn’t had a square meal in a couple of days. Anyway, while we were scarfing down drumsticks, he finally seemed to realize again that I was with him. He looked at me real mean-like and said, ‘You don’t remember what happened in Savannah, do you?’ It wasn’t a question. It was an order. And he sort of hinted that my remembering could be hazardous to my health. I tried to act real casual. I asked him what he was talking about, told him I didn’t even remember being in Savannah for a long, long time. He kind of smiled. I think he thought he’d knocked the memory of that night right out of my head—like I had amnesia or something. That suited him fine, I could tell. Then he starts in telling me we’re heading for Canada first thing in the morning. He was talking real crazy and looking wild-eyed. I knew then what I had to do. I wasn’t about to go off to no Canada with a murderer!”
“How did you get away?”
“I waited till he was sleeping. He’d been drinking a good bit so he was snoring away. I had this little pistol I always carried for protection from back in the days when I used to have to walk home alone after work. Lucky for me, I brought it along, ’cause while I was going through his pants, looking for his money, he woke up.
“‘What the hell you doing?’ he wanted to know.
“‘Just getting me some traveling money,’ I told him, real sweet-like.
“Well, he came roaring up out of that bed like a bull that just saw red. He’d have killed me right then and there if it hadn’t been for that gun. I never shot anybody in my life and I was shaking all over. I couldn’t bring myself to shoot to kill, so I aimed it right for his ding-dong and told him he better back off or else. When he saw I really meant it, he turned into the old Dick—talking nice, smiling, telling me all the great things we were going to do once we got out of the country. I wasn’t buying any of it. I kept that pistol steady while I got the car keys and the money, several hundred dollars. I left him enough for food for a couple of days and bus fare back to Savannah or wherever. He kept on threatening—said if I took the car he’d call the cops. I didn’t figure that was too likely, considering what he’d done in Savannah and me being an eyewitness. Just before I backed out of the room, he looked at me with murder in his eyes and said ‘You ever tell anyone what you saw and I swear to God I’ll kill you, too.’”
“You got away?”
“I’m here talking, ain’t I? If he’d caught me, I sure wouldn’t be. He may get me yet. That’s why I’m staying in Savannah, dancing at the Blue Note, and hanging with a kid almost young enough to be my son. So far, so good.”
“Have you heard anything from Lamar since you left him in Arab?”
“Not directly. Only through his buddy Quincey.”
“When did he first contact you?”
“Not long after I’d got shed of Big Dick. I figured he was just a crank caller at first. Then he said some things to me that he could only have heard from Lamar. Things about me.” She looked away, almost shyly. “Real personal things. He knew details about the killing, too, that no one who wasn’t there could have known unless Big Dick had filled him in. He said Big Dick just wanted to stay in touch and that he wanted to make sure I knew he was still around. Scared me shitless, I can tell you. The calls have come every few months since that first one. This Quincey character is really beginning to get on my nerves.”
“Hey, ’Nolia honey,” Rat called and leaned in at the door. “Pinky says he can’t stall these guys much longer. You better hustle it up.”
“Coming right now, darling. Tell Pinky to put on my music.”
Magnolia rose grandly from her beat-up chair. She shrugged out of her flowered kimono, displaying an ample figure clothed only in G-string, mesh stockings, and blue sequin pasties.
“If you’ll excuse me now,” she said, “I got to finish dressing. And, Mr. Conrad, I’ll be most obliged if you can get this Quincey guy off my case. I’d really like to see Big Dick behind bars, too. I won’t breathe easy until I know he’s been put away—one way or another.”
“One last thing,” Bolt said. “I’ll need that post office box number Quincey gave you.”
“Sure thing!” She grabbed her eyebrow pencil and wrote down the number on a paper towel. “I wish you luck.”
Bolt slipped out and went to find a telephone. It was late, past nine. He had told Mary Scarlett he would call as soon as he wound up his meeting. She was still at Dr. Schlager’s. He tried to make himself heard over the blaring bump-and-grind music and the whoops of Magnolia’s enthusiastic admirers. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched her shimmy across the tiny stage, shedding gloves, earrings, scarf, and finally the slinky see-through gown she had donned after he left her dressing room. By the time he hung up, Magnolia was once more down to the bare, blue sequin essentials.
She was quite a woman, he mused, watching her stalk the stage like a lioness with a blue mane.
“Quite a woman, with quite a story.”
He turned and walked toward the door, wondering how in the world he was going to break the news to Mary Scarlett that her father had murdered her mother.
>>
Fifteen
W
hen Bolt arrived home thirty minutes later, he found Mary Scarlett packing her bags. Naturally, he jumped to the conclusion that she planned to go to Atlanta with him. That wouldn’t do at all. He had decided, at least for the time being, to keep everything he knew about Big Dick and Miss Lucy’s death to himself. If Mary Scarlett went with him—as much as he would enjoy her company—there would be no way to keep his mission a secret. Besides, he had more than one purpose in mind on this trip. Once he located this Quincey character, he meant to find Richard Lamar and bring him back to Savannah to stand trial for his crime. The man only thought he had gotten away with murder.
“What are you doing?” Bolt asked as he met Mary Scarlett bringing one of her bags into the foyer. “Packing for me?”
She laughed. “You’d look real cute carrying my flowered tapestry suitcases through the Atlanta airport. No, Bolt. I’ve decided this is my cue to clear out. I don’t want to stay here alone, and the obvious place for me to go is to my own house. It’s high time I got busy putting that in order. The rest of my stuff should arrive from Spain any day now. Believe me, you don’t want to have to fit all of it in here.” Changing the subject abruptly, she asked “How long will you be gone?”
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Not too long. I have to be in court with another case next week. I’ll be back by then, regardless.”
She looked at him oddly. “Regardless of what? What kind of business do you have to take care of.”
“I really can’t talk about it, Mary Scarlett. All I can tell you is that I’m looking for someone.”
“A missing person?”
He answered evasively, “You could say that.”
She laughed softly. “That makes two of us. I’m searching for a missing person, too. Jacques St. Julian. But I’m afraid I’m a lot less likely to succeed than you are since my guy’s been dead for over a century.”
Bolt made a move toward the kitchen. “How about we have a drink and rustle up some grub? Or would you rather go out?”
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