Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  “That’s enough. I get the picture.” Train pushed himself to standing, rubbed the small of his back. He shoved his glasses on top of his head and went rummaging in the closet. “I’ll bring you the usual—a burner phone, some sunglasses, a cash card. There’s a clothing donation box in the hall—find something plain and out-of-character, a dress or church lady skirt in your case. If you need to come here, use the back door, but stay away as much as you can. They’ll be asking me questions soon, if they’re looking any kinda hard for you, but they don’t know about this room. Very few people do. And here, take this. Since you apparently need the full incognito package.”

  He handed me a box of hair dye. Rich Mink, the label proclaimed.

  I looked up at him. “You’re way too good at this fugitive thing.”

  “The wheels of justice sometimes run over the tired and downtrodden.” He smiled wearily. “And tonight, you count as one of them.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  The next morning, blue skies returned with a vengeance. I lowered the binoculars, unwrapped another piece of nicotine gum. The eleven o’clock sun made surveillance a pain, but the bookstore was still an excellent perch for keeping an eye on the action at the DeSoto, which for the last two hours had consisted of absolutely nothing.

  Trey was a morning person, but he was not a rip-open-the-curtains-and-greet-the-day person. Still, I knew he was in there, probably at his desk surrounded by paperwork. And I knew he’d eventually either come out on the balcony for a bit of surveillance, or come out the front door and have the Ferrari brought around.

  I muffled a sneeze into my elbow. The bookstore manager gave me a skeptical look, then went back to her inventory. I put the binoculars up again just in time to see Trey step outside on the balcony.

  He looked left and right, checking, assessing. My heart did an odd pitter-patter at the sight of his familiar spit-and-polish self against the red brick. I wondered if he felt the same voyeuristic charge when he watched me unawares, letting his gaze linger on me, light and practiced.

  I couldn’t fight the tiny smile. Hey, boyfriend.

  Trey stopped abruptly. Then he raised his chin, like a wolf scenting the wind. And looked right at me.

  I froze too, but didn’t lower the binoculars. I could see the crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the kink at the side of his mouth. Dang it, how did he know I was there?

  “You said you’d call me.”

  I almost dropped my binoculars as I whirled around. Finn stood next to the Nancy Drew collection. Today she was a middle-aged Savannah tourist complete with cropped cargo pants, off-brand athletic shoes, and a green shamrock tee shirt. A fake ponytail slithered from under a slouchy hat.

  Of course, I didn’t look like myself either. The hair dye might have billed itself as Rich Mink, but in reality it was the dull brown of old furniture. A navy knit skirt and mousy gray blouse completed my disguise. I still wore my red La Perla lingerie underneath, though, like Superman’s S under his Clark Kent button-down.

  “Nothing to tell,” I said. “It was a decoy unit. Besides, I’ve been busy being framed. Or haven’t you heard?”

  Finn stood next to me at the window. Today she had crow’s feet and a double chin, hopefully the result of clever make-up. “I know. But not because I put that gun in your car.”

  “What about the GPS?”

  “Guilty as charged. I stuck that on there before you even left Atlanta. But—”

  “Yeah yeah, I know. Legal in the state of Georgia, part of your official duties.”

  She looked around the alcove. “Nice hide sight you got here. But if you’re watching to see if the cops come, you’re too late. They carted Trey down to the station within an hour of your discovering that gun. Somebody called it in before he did, so they were already on the way. Which I’m sure is no surprise to you.” She crossed her arms. “Smooth move, by the way, hightailing it and leaving him to deal with the fallout.”

  I bristled at her phrasing. “Is he okay?”

  “Sure. The man knows how to handle himself under questioning. Told them he didn’t know where you were, that you and he often had disagreements about the proper procedure when handling such matters, and that it was entirely in your nature to take off without telling him where you were going, and that if he heard from you, he’d let you know they were looking for you, but that no, he had no information to share except that he would appreciate a call should they locate you.”

  I recognized the cadence of his voice in her speech and knew she was quoting him word for word. “You talked to him in person.”

  “I did. At his hotel, last night around ten, as he was coming back from the station. And now I’ve found you, which was depressingly simple. You must really have it bad for that guy.”

  “Finn—”

  “Which means it will be simple for the cops to find you too, if you stay here. They’re starting to look, and hard.” She gestured with her chin out the window. “See that undercover car? The blue one with the busted taillight? There’s a plainclothes unit in the lobby. Two cops hankering for an easy collar, both of them thinking you’re dumb enough to come strutting into the lobby.”

  I made a noise.

  “Exactly.” Her expression grew sympathetic. “Talk to me, Tai. You don’t want to end up behind bars—that’s why you’re up here with a BOLO on your back—and I’m here to tell you that you are absolutely correct in staying out of there. Jasper is well-connected. And he’s aching to lay teeth into you.”

  “So?”

  “So let me help you.”

  “Like you helped Hope?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  The bookstore manager peered around the corner at us, her eyes as shushy as a librarian’s. The cheerful front-door bell called her back to the register before she could break up our little confab.

  I lowered my voice. “I’m not selling my soul to your boss, or my testimony.”

  “He’s helping Hope because he believes she might be in danger.”

  “From his own client.”

  “Mr. Lovett has no knowledge of such intentions. And deep down, the strategic part of his brain realizes that if something does happen to Hope, or if something happens to her husband, what’s his name—”

  “John.”

  “Right. That guy. Regardless, if either of them becomes the subject of foul play, Mr. Lovett knows Jasper will get the blame. That’s his whole defense right there, that a lot of crimes that Jasper didn’t commit are getting heaped on his plenty vile and distasteful client. Extra bodies and crimes will not help him, especially not yours.”

  I felt a flutter of hope. “You said ‘if.’ So it wasn’t John they pulled from the river?”

  “There’s no ID yet.

  Relief washed through me. I liked the idea of John being lazy, John hotfooting it out of trouble, even John trying to wreak some vengeance by stealing Klan money. I did not like the idea of John being murdered.

  Finn ran a finger along the dusty edge of an ancient Agatha Christie. “This is my last official task here in Savannah, finding you and offering you protection. I’m off the Jasper Boone case, back to Atlanta. Nonetheless, I can find you a safe house somewhere in the metro area, if you want.”

  “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

  She laughed. “Oh, sure. That’s what pays the bills, heart goodness. No, there’s a fee attached. But it can be partially ameliorated with information.”

  “You want information, go talk to Trey again. He’s more in the loop than I am.”

  “I wouldn’t mind it, for sure. He’s smoking hot and wicked smart, but he’s handicapped by that moral rectitude. Unlike you. You have no such limitations. I know this because I’ve been watching you for months, Tai Randolph. Ever since Lovett took the case.”

  And then in the crooked slant of dusty light, I recognized her. He
r hair had been black and bobbed then, and she’d worn enough make-up for a Vogue shoot, but now that I saw it, it was clear as a bell.

  “It was you outside the History Center! You’re the one who gave me that photograph, the one of me standing at the top of Kennesaw Mountain!”

  She smiled in that bewildering way. “Took me five minutes to get that framed properly. You never even turned around.”

  “But that was before Jasper hired Lovett!”

  “You’re not getting it. Mr. Lovett chose Jasper, not the other way around. I’ve been putting together background on you and Trey and your whole family for months now, at his request.”

  “That’s what you call background? Sending me weird photographs with cryptic verses?”

  “I have an undergraduate in comparative literature that I rarely get to use.” She shrugged. “It was my friendly way of giving you a heads-up. And everything I told you turned out to be correct, didn’t it?”

  I kept shaking my head. Yes, Hope did fling her looks everywhere, and yes, Ivy turned out to be as clingy and sucking as any parasitic vine.

  “But you were in the photo with Hope!”

  “Remotely-operated long distance cameras are a PI’s best friend.”

  “But…why?”

  “Because I needed your help. I didn’t know my way around Savannah, but you connected the dots I gave you, and I followed the picture they made.”

  “But before that…I get the quotes about Ivy and Hope, but why did you stick a Bible quote on the picture of me? All the kingdoms of the world and their glory?”

  “It’s from where Satan tempted Jesus. On the mountaintop.”

  “I know that! I just…what the hell, Finn?”

  “It’s my way of making you an offer.” She pulled out a business card. “Look me up when you get to Atlanta. I could use someone like you, someone adept at crossing lines.”

  I snorted. “No, thank you. I get caught sticking my toe across the line, there goes my Federal Firearms License, and there goes my shop.”

  “Like that would be a great loss.”

  I glared at her. She put up her hands in a conciliatory gesture.

  “Sorry. But you gotta admit, you have a taste for risky behavior. Chasing killers, evading cops, sleeping with a former assassin—”

  “Trey was a sniper, not an assassin.”

  She shrugged. “Tomato, tomahto. The point is, you know I’m right. You love working the line. And I’ll tell you something else. Sometimes Mr. Lovett represents innocent people. And I do the best that I can for them, but sometimes…Like he always says, it’s not about the law, it’s about what he can prove.”

  A strange echo of what the prosecutor had told me during our first interview. If I believed it, then the courtroom was one of the most justice-free places in the entire judicial process. The thing was, I did believe it. Even my ruled-up boyfriend believed it. He’d seen too many guilty people walk free because of this technicality or that rookie goof. And I’d seen too many innocents take a hard fall for a stupid mistake.

  Finn waggled the card. “C’mon, Tai. I need a confidential informant. Be mine. Help me do some super-secret good in the world and maybe we won’t go to hell after all.”

  I thought of all the ways I’d stepped over the lines she was talking about. Sometimes leaped over, sometimes snuck over, sometimes erasing the line with my foot. They boxed me in. Safe, yes, but soul-draining.

  I accepted the card, dropped it into my bag.

  She smiled. “I’ll be in touch.” She started to leave, then snapped her fingers. “Oh, speaking of confidential informants. A mutual friend of ours is in town and wants to meet with you, say, two this afternoon?”

  I got a chill. “Hope’s in Savannah? Why?”

  “She says she doesn’t want to make her parole officer suspicious, but I don’t believe a word of that. Regardless, she wants to see you, and I told her I’d offer.”

  Hope was wanting to talk to me. Which meant she either had a trap to spring or she needed my help.

  “Where does she want to meet?”

  “Gracie’s. I assume you know where that is.”

  “I do.”

  Finn gave me a pointed look. “For both your sakes, this Gracie had better not have a big mouth.”

  I kept my expression blank. “Oh, she doesn’t. She’s silent as the grave.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  The bus door opened with a wheeze, and a billow of super-cooled air rushed in my face. The driver beamed. “All aboard!”

  I dropped a quick glance left and right, then took the steps upward. It had been years since I’d hopped a tour bus. Back then, I’d been the guide, in charge of general goodwill and nonstop yackety-yak. Now, I was a tourist, one of the herd. It felt strange, but since my Camaro was currently under police eyeballs, I needed transportation. And since I was on the lam, I needed cover. A tour bus provided both.

  I dropped my enormous sunglasses on my nose and hid behind the trifold map. Transformation complete.

  I took a window seat, tuning out the tour guide as she began her spiel. Here was the haunted square, here the haunted rock, here the haunted B&B. The tour bus chugged along, letting me look at my city from its sheltered bubble. Down the green squares, past the fountains of Forsyth Park, up Victory Drive with its columned verandas and arching oaks, finally turning left onto a road I could have followed blindfolded.

  The road to Bonaventure Cemetery.

  The driver spewed us out at the east end of the cemetery, right on the Wilmington River, with instructions to find the guide. The tourists did as instructed, already snapping selfies as they lumbered toward the center.

  I lingered behind. Soon I could hear them only as a distant drone, and the true sounds of Bonaventure rose. Two egrets took flight, their wings beating the saline air. The water lapped low against the edge of the waving fronds of sawgrass and spartina. The sky beyond was the liquid blue of the waves below, the clouds like paint daubed on the horizon. If I stared long enough, I lost track of where the sky stopped and the water began.

  I shook off the sensation and continued along the path until I came to the wooden sign that said simply “Gracie.” I’d led hundreds of tourists to this spot to gaze on the final resting place of Gracie Watson, who died at the age of six in 1889. A life-size carving of the girl adorned the center of a private garden, protected by a wrought iron fence that reminded me of an ornate cage, as if the statue were a bird that could take wing and fly away. Wind and rain had softened Gracie’s features. Tourists could not reach her, or their fingers would have done similar work. They still felt pulled to her, though, and left trinkets at her marker—costume jewelry and marbles and bubble wands.

  No sign of Hope, which wasn’t a surprise. Gracie was the bull’s-eye I was supposed to hit, but she was too public a spot for contact. So I wandered down the curve in the path, behind which the trees formed a shady copse. I waited in that hidden place, up to my knees in faded azaleas.

  I wasn’t surprised to hear footsteps, but the sound still made me tingle at the base of my spine. The footsteps came closer, and soon I glimpsed a familiar figure at the end of the lane. Hope, going for nondescript in jeans and a tee shirt, her brown hair tousled. She held a cigarette to her lips, the smoke a wreath around her head. She joined me away from the main road, in the tucked away section.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

  She started walking along the river, keeping away from the tourists. I stayed at her side. She didn’t comment on the hair or the matronly clothes. She was a chameleon herself and knew the drill. She stopped at one of the wooden benches overlooking the water, a resting place for the living, its boards eroded smooth and gray by the seasons. She didn’t sit, though, just stared out over the waves.

  “Have they ID’d the body yet?” she said.

  “No. Bu
t you know it’s not John.”

  She examined the cigarette in her hand, watched the smoke curl off it. “Of course it is.”

  “Look, John isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he knows how to stay out of trouble, that kind anyway. Whoever put that body there was an amateur, and whoever they got, it was an even bigger amateur. So, no, not John.”

  “He’d changed from when you knew him. He trusted people too much. Especially me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I told him I wanted to settle down. I told him I wanted a nice easy life, that I would cooperate, testify, all the things they were telling me I had to do. And he took me at my word. But it was all a lie.”

  She sat down on the bench and extended the pack of cigarettes my way. I slid one from the pack, let her light it for me. These were stronger than my baby puffs back in the Camaro, real smokes. I could feel the head rush from the first inhale.

  “You’re skipping out,” I said.

  She shrugged. “They got to me in jail. It was easy enough. They stand too close to you, brush against you. Soon enough somebody tells you what to do, and you do it. That’s how you stay alive.”

  “Jasper’s crew?”

  She let a trickle of smoke dribble from her mouth. “Nope. The LOTIEs.”

  Ladies of the Invisible Empire. “You sure it was them?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Triple tau on the wrist. God, race, and country on their lips.”

  “What’d they want?”

  “For me to drop my testimony. They want Jasper running around free, where they can get him easy, not sent to some super-max with extra security for high-risk targets.”

  I took another drag, let the smoke linger in my mouth. A jet-ski came zipping down the river, its high-pitched whine drowning out the bird song and insect hum.