“Thank the Lord for that,” she said, her face alight with happiness. With her fingers on his arm, she urged him to go with her to see her father. He doubted the wisdom of it, but the choice was hers.
Franklin Tatum sat in a big, comfortable leather chair facing a window that overlooked beautiful flower and vegetable gardens “Hello, Daddy. How are you?” Heather said to him, then hugged him and kissed his cheek. His hands stroked her back in a feeble gesture of affection. “I brought a friend to meet you,” she said. “Come in, Judson.
“Daddy, this is Judson Philips. He’s an attorney.”
Franklin Tatum braced himself on the arms of the chair and, with great effort, stood and extended a hand. “It’s good of you to come. I’m happy to meet you.”
He looked at the man, tall and gaunt and probably a mere shadow of his former self, but his dignity was fully intact. “I’m honored to meet you, sir. Please sit.”
“Thank you, Mr. Philips. Standing for any length of time has become a chore. I hope you’ll join us for supper. Annie tells me that you have an aunt here with whom you plan to stay, but you’re welcome to stay here. We have plenty of room.”
“I appreciate your offer, sir, but I haven’t been to see my aunt yet, and I don’t know what she’s planned. When I get there, I’ll phone Heather and compare notes.”
“You’re an orderly man, and that’s an admirable trait.”
“Thank you, sir. I’d better leave now.” He walked over to Heather. “I’ll be in touch shortly.”
He reached Cissy’s house ten minutes later, got out of his car and rang the doorbell. The full moon flooded the earth with light, but Cissy turned on the porch light nonetheless.
“Judson. Son, I’ve been scared to death that something happened to you.”
He bent down and hugged her. “Why? I didn’t say what time I’d be here.”
“That’s right, you didn’t. Supper’s ready. Where’s your bag?”
Just as he’d suspected, and not for anything would he have disappointed her. He got his bag from the trunk of his car and went inside. Except for the wallpaper of yellow and red roses, which he preferred not to see, his room couldn’t have been more comfortable or more pleasant.
He telephoned Heather. “Sweetheart, as I suspected, Aunt Cissy waited supper for me. She’s given me a very nice room and private bath, and she’s as proprietary as my mom would be in the circumstances. I’ll call you after dinner, and please tell your father that I’ll see him tomorrow. Consider yourself kissed.”
“And you do the same. Bye.”
He looked at the table and the food arrayed on it. “Aunt Cissy, who else is eating?”
“Nobody. Why?”
“Well,” he began, sitting down, “you’re not fat, and I don’t plan to get fat, so what do we do with the leftovers?” She didn’t see the problem, so he primed himself to eat as much as he could and not think about what was left.
“Now, tell me, son, what have you found out about your parents?”
“As I told you, I discovered that Mom had a safe deposit box. I opened it and found her letters to Fentriss Sparkman, my adoption papers, the death certificate of a child who died a few months before I was adopted, some other papers and some fine jewelry that was obviously a gift from Fentriss Sparkman. You were right. They were serious lovers, and I think Mom’s mother intercepted Sparkman’s letters after he left Hagerstown. I suppose you knew that her mother confined her to the house after she got pregnant, and she had no way of contacting Sparkman. She didn’t answer his letters and I suppose he eventually stopped writing. Unless I find him, we’ll never know.”
“Did you say you plan to find him?”
“Absolutely. I suspect she was my mother and that he’s my father.” He told her how the rattling window was responsible for his finding the key to the safe deposit box.
“You go ’way from here. She wanted you to find it. That’s as clear as the nose on your face.”
“Where do you think I should start my search for Fentriss Sparkman?”
“Well, that hotel’s as old as you are, so it’s not likely they’ll be able to help you.”
“I know. Tomorrow, I’ll see if he’s listed as a member of the Society of American Registered Architects. They would have a contact for him. I also want to know whether he was a member of a local church or social organization, where he went to college and if he was a member of a fraternity. Since this is the only place I know of that he lived, I have to start here.”
“You’re a smart man, Judson. Oh, and don’t forget the local library. Hagerstown is proud of that hotel, so the library will probably have information on Fentriss.”
“Thanks for your help, Aunt Cissy. Let’s get this kitchen cleaned.” He took the dishes and utensils to the kitchen, rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. “Where do we put this food?”
“I’ll do that. Some woman is going to get a sweetheart of a man. You told me you’d met someone. How is that coming along?”
“Nicely, I think. She’s here. You’ll meet her tomorrow.”
“She’s here. In Hagerstown? You’re not telling me she lives here. There’s nobody here for you.”
“No, ma’am. She came with me. Remember, she’s a lawyer and an ambassador. She’s helping me with this search.” He put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. “I brought her with me. She’s my girl, and she’s staying at her father’s house, but I wanted to stay with you.”
“Of course you did. Who’s her father?”
“Franklin Tatum.”
“Really? He’s been a respected citizen in this town. He taught my daughter over in Baltimore. I hear he’s not too well these days.”
“No, he isn’t. If you’ll excuse me, Aunt Cissy, I have to phone Heather.”
“That’s right, son. Let her know she can depend on you. I don’t remember her, but everybody in town knows her father.”
The next day, he and Heather had breakfast at her father’s house, then left to buy a copy of the Herald-Mail. They perused it for possible leads but found none. At the library, they checked newspaper articles online but couldn’t find the name Fentriss Sparkman.
“Maybe he’s moved,” she said.
“Yes, or deceased. We need to find a listing of local architects for, say, five years ago.
“Let’s take alternating years,” he suggested. “You check one year earlier and I’ll check two years earlier until we find him.”
“Eureka,” she said a few minutes later. “Here he is in Frederick, Maryland. That’s five years ago. What do you think?”
“He’s probably retired, or worse. Any leads?”
“He built several buildings there. The last one was dedicated a little more than three years ago. We should be able to learn something there. I think we can stop looking,” she said.
“I’d like to check out the churches to see if he belonged to any of them. Some of his fellow church members might still be in contact with him.”
“Good idea,” she said and went online and began writing the names of local churches, the ministers and phone numbers.
“We can check those after lunch,” he told her and phoned Cissy. “This is Judson. Are we late for lunch? If we are—”
“You come right on and bring that young lady. I want to meet her. Lunch will be ready when you get here.”
“Can’t I go home and freshen up?” Heather asked Judson.
“Why? You want to put on an evening gown? You’re wearing a white pantsuit and a yellow blouse, your hair is perfect, and you look beautiful, at least to me.”
“But she’s the only one of your relatives I’ll meet, and…”
He stood, took her briefcase and his in one hand and her hand in his other one. “Stop worrying. Come on. You’re going to get a wonderful lunch.”
He put the briefcases in the trunk of his car and drove them to Cissy’s house. They found her sitting on the front porch cooling herself with a church fan. When he parked, she got up
and met them as they walked up the path to her steps.
After hugging Judson, she smiled at Heather and then hugged her. “There’s a lot Judson didn’t tell me about you, but now that I’ve met you, I can guess half of it. He’s too smart to pass up a woman who’s both talented and beautiful.”
Heather’s pleasure showed on her face. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Aunt Cissy, this is Heather Tatum.” Without thinking about it, he eased an arm around Heather’s waist. “Heather, this is my aunt Cissy.”
“Yes,” Cissy said. “He left out a lot, but he’s very proud of you, Heather. He told me you’re a lawyer and a roving ambassador. Congratulations. I love to see our young women step up to the plate, educate themselves and do important things.”
“Thank you, Aunt Cissy. I appreciate your good wishes. Getting the education was the easy part. The rest has been like walking barefoot on hot coals.”
“I’m sure of that. Anytime a woman gets into a man’s world, the menfolk do their best to kick her right back into the kitchen. Till I got a job teaching math at the local high school, only men taught math and science here. For the next thirty-five years, the boys tried to put me back in my place, but I never gave in. You can freshen up in the powder room right there.” She pointed to a door off the living room. “I made sure to get the place nice and cool.”
They finished a meal of baked ham, corn fritters, butter beans, coleslaw, pickled beets, lemonade and apple pie à la mode. Heather looked at Cissy and Judson, patted her belly and said, “I could go to sleep right this minute. That was wonderful.”
“You can’t sleep now,” he told her, “because we have to call these churches and find out whether Fentriss Sparkman belonged to one of them.”
“Okay.” She opened her pocketbook. “Here’s the list.”
“Let me see,” Cissy said. She glanced over it. “He might have gone to Mt. Bethel or Shiloh Baptist, but not any of these other ones, unless he was Catholic. If he was Catholic, he was sinning up a blue streak and probably not going to church. I’d start with Bethel and Shiloh. Didn’t you make any headway this morning?”
“We found him listed as being in Frederick, Maryland, five years ago, but we don’t have anything on him after that. So my next search will be in Frederick.”
Sitting in Cissy’s living room, he dialed Mt. Bethel AME Church. “This is attorney Judson Philips. I’m trying to reach Fentriss Sparkman. Could he have been a member of your church?”
“No, sir. I’ve been preaching here for almost forty years, and I never heard of him.”
Judson thanked the man and made the next call. He dialed with shaky fingers, aware that the effort could move him toward success in his search or prove a waste of time.
“He used to come here years ago,” the minister of Shiloh Baptist Church told Judson. “I mean that was a long time ago. I was a young assistant minister. As I remember, he wasn’t active in the church, just attended something like one or two times a month. Tomorrow morning I’ll ask if anybody knows his whereabouts. Call me around three o’clock.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll do that. You’ve been very helpful.”
He told Heather and Cissy what he’d learned. “I’m wondering if it would make sense to go over to Frederick today. It would probably take us at least an hour to get there, and I don’t have any leads.”
Cissy poured them each a glass of homemade lemonade. “Frederick’s a big city. You could go there and waste a lot of time.”
“I know,” Judson said, “but I’ll have some leads by next weekend. Still, it’s as if I got to a brick wall and don’t have a way to climb over it.”
Chapter 5
“Are you taking anyone to the White House reception?” Scott asked Heather the next Monday morning as they drank coffee in the coffee closet, the staff’s name for the little room.
“Judson is my escort.”
“That’s great. So you finally broke down and decided not to go alone and be a renegade.”
“This is the first time I had a man I was proud to go with.”
Scott pressed his right hand to the left side of his chest and covered his face with a hurt expression. “You wound me.”
“No such thing. I couldn’t attend with a colleague. Besides, you never asked me. What happened to the woman you took to that last reception?”
“It was nothing serious—you remember.”
“That’s a good thing. She wasn’t right for you. Any tips on that situation in Colombia? I know you’re dealing with Mexico, but I see some similar threads in these problems.”
“You’re right. There are several, and they may be more closely connected than we think. I’ll send you my notes on what I’ve figured out about problems in Mexico. When are you leaving?”
“Saturday morning. I want to speak with a few strategic contacts before I get down to business the following Monday.”
“Great idea but watch your back. Say, how are things going with you and Judson? My so-called friend doesn’t tell me much.”
“He requires a lot of understanding, but I’m getting there, and we’re slowly getting on the same page.”
“I was hoping for more than that. He’s one hell of a guy, and he’s decent-looking. What’s the holdup?”
“Decent-looking, did you say? That’s a laugh! Judson charts his own course. If I had my way, it would move faster because I’m always impatient. But in this case, it probably wouldn’t last. To say the least, I’m learning something important, and I’m glad for it.”
“Don’t waste it, friend. The postman does not always ring twice.”
She went back to her office thinking about Scott’s advice. The more she was with Judson, the more she wanted to be with him and the more she admired him. He’d known the eight-four-year-old aunt of his adoptive mother for less than one month, and he’d taken her into his life. It had astonished her to see that he regarded Cissy with genuine affection, which the woman truly reciprocated.
“He’s like that with her,” she said to herself. “Imagine what he’d be like if he loved a woman.” She stopped walking when she realized that she badly wanted to be that woman. When did I fall in love with him? I was being so careful and so clever. It happened anyway.
Thursday arrived, and Judson was at Heather’s apartment at seven-thirty that morning for the drive to Washington, although they usually made the commute separately and by train. Because they planned to stay in Washington and not risk a late-night drive after a day of work and partying, they had arranged to stay at a hotel.
“Do you want connecting rooms?” the registration clerk at the Willard Hotel asked.
“No,” they said simultaneously.
He handed them their keys. “I’ll send your bags up. Enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you,” Judson said.
“He was fresh,” she said to Judson as they walked to the elevator. “Twenty years old and fresh.”
“I remember when I was that age. I spent a lot of time imagining what it was to have sex all the time. Don’t think too unkindly of him. That is definitely not the age of wisdom.”
“Girls think of moonlight and roses, a guy kissing you at sunset beside a running brook, whether your dad’s going to let you out of the house the next evening so you can see him, getting to the next party, stuff like that. Oh yes, we do think about sex and imagine that one day a guy will make the earth move.”
“That is definitely not what guys are thinking.” He laughed. “I’m in 618. Where are you?”
“Six nineteen. We’re in rooms facing each other.”
“I’ll meet you at the desk downstairs at five-thirty,” Judson promised.
She looked up at him. “I don’t suppose I could get a kiss here in the corridor?”
He kissed her quickly on the mouth. “I’m not risking one of your sizzling sessions. A lot’s facing me today. If we meet at five-thirty, that should give us plenty of time,” he said. “We have to be there at a quarter of seven latest. The car wi
ll be here at a quarter of six, and the traffic from these few blocks to the White House will be horrendous.”
Heather left the office early and returned to the hotel at a quarter of three. Official functions could be as grueling as they were glamorous, and she wanted time to rest. She headed for the elevator and stopped. Judson walked out of the hotel’s business center reading a paper and nearly walked into her. Shocked at the near collision, he reached out to her, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “See you later,” he said, barely taking his eyes from the paper he’d been reading. “Don’t oversleep.”
She caressed his cheek. “Don’t you oversleep.” In her room, she inspected her dress and, satisfied that she would look her best, she put her underwear, evening shoes, gloves and bag on a chair. After a leisurely, scented bath, she dried and powdered her body, checked her nails, rolled up her hair and crawled into bed. Remembering that she had to be ready in two hours, she asked for a wake-up call and went to sleep.
He’d fought with the idea of wearing a cummerbund, decided that it was inappropriate with his navy tux. He didn’t spend a lot of time fussing with clothes, but when it came to women and formal attire, he’d learned that you’d better get it right. He leaned against the reception desk waiting for Heather, impatient, not because he minded the wait; he didn’t. But because he simply could not wait to be with her, and he knew that no matter what she wore, she would suit him. She turned the corner from the bank of elevators and he glanced at his watch. Precisely on time. A smile lit her face the minute she saw him, and his heart fluttered. He stepped away from the desk and went to meet her, a vision in an elegant dark pink gown and silver accessories.
“Heather, you’re so beautiful and so elegant,” he said. “You take my breath away.”
“Thank you.” Her radiant smile seemed to bless him. “I’m glad you like the way I look. I’ll be lucky to leave that reception with you.”
Love Me Tonight Page 8