The wide hallway was dark and cool. A fake colonial chandelier with only one lightbulb still burning hung from a dropped ceiling. The beautiful old plaster walls were painted pale pink; the elaborate egg-and-dart plaster cornice boards and moldings were a dull gray. Venetian blinds covered the tall floor-to-ceiling windows. I looked down at the floor. Thank God. They were coated with grime, but the original heart-pine floorboards had been left intact.
James took my elbow and guided me gently inside. Twin parlors opened off either side of the hallway. The room to the right was piled high with furniture, three long folding card tables were pushed together, every inch of tabletop covered with crystal, china, silver, and pieces of bric-abrac. Naturally, I started toward the room. But James pulled me back. “Other side,” he whispered.
The parlor to the left had been cleared of furniture. A cheap box fan hummed in one of the open windows, pushing more hot, damp air into the already saunalike room.
The gathering was small, no more than twenty people. Most of Anna Ruby Mullinax’s friends looked to be candidates for their own memorial service. They were white haired, stoop shouldered, frail. The men mopped at their glistening faces with handkerchiefs, the ladies fanned themselves with the memorial booklets that had been stacked on a table by the front door.
A tall, thin woman wearing white minister’s robes stood at a wooden lectern in front of the fireplace. Her shoulder-length white hair stood in a frizzy halo around her head.
But I wasn’t really looking at the minister. I was looking around for Caroline.
She saw me first and gave a little wave. I nodded politely and felt my insides curl up and my scalp start to tingle.
Caroline was dressed in a pale gray linen suit with a short, tight skirt that hit four inches above her fabulously knobby knees. As always, she radiated cool elegance while the rest of us were drowning in a puddle of our own perspiration.
An older man stood beside Caroline, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. He had dark wavy hair styled in a bad comb-over, bushy graying eyebrows, and a tennis tan. I’d met his type at Tal’s parents’ parties. Christ Church. Oglethorpe Club. He was wearing a college class ring. Probably Duke or University of Virginia. Definitely Kappa Alpha.
“Who’s that with her?” I hissed into James’s ear.
He glanced over, nodded solemnly at Caroline’s friend, who was watching the two of us watch the two of them.
“That’s Gerry Blankenship. The Mullinax family lawyer. Shh.”
Anna Ruby Mullinax died at the age of ninety-seven, but her going-away speech took less than ten minutes. “A quickie,” my father would have called it.
Within another five minutes, a blond-headed young man gussied up in a white dress shirt, black slacks, and black bow tie was passing around a tray with thimble-sized glasses of sherry. A black teenaged boy in the same outfit offered a silver tray heaped with cheese straws, the traditional Savannah cocktail/funeral offering.
The guests stood and chatted quietly, as though they were outside a church instead of inside the last vestiges of a nearly vanished way of life.
I edged over toward the parlor doorway, heading for the room where all the goodies were stashed. James grabbed my arm just before I reached the hallway. “Eloise!” he said, a little too heartily.
Caroline DeSantos and Gerry Blankenship stood beside James. I couldn’t tell who had cornered whom.
James nodded toward the lawyer and then toward me. “Gerry Blankenship, meet my niece, Eloise Foley. Gerry is Miss Mullinax’s attorney, Weezie. He was just telling me about the plans for Beaulieu. And of course, you already know Caroline DeSantos.”
The faintest tinge of pink flushed across Caroline’s lovely olive face. She brushed a strand of glossy black hair away from her forehead.
“This is awkward, isn’t it?” she asked, looking from me to Gerry to Uncle James. “Ex-wife and wife to be. Living practically on top of each other. Did you know that, Gerry? Weezie lives in the carriage house behind our house. But that’s Savannah. We’ll just all have to be very grown-up about this kind of thing, won’t we, Weezie?”
Blankenship coughed. I heard James inhale sharply, waiting to see if I’d keep my promise about nonviolence. I felt my fists tightening. Caroline was taller, but I had at least twenty pounds to my advantage. I could beat the stuffing out of her right now, I thought. Slap her into another time zone. Pinch off her head with my bare hands.
“We’re all adults,” I said, shrugging. Of course I wouldn’t attack Caroline in public. Private revenge is so much sweeter.
Chapter 5
James Foley held his breath as he watched the two women sizing each other up like a pair of alley cats circling the same scrap of mullet.
James had met Caroline months ago, long before Tal’s announced shift of affections, at a dinner party Weezie had hosted at the townhouse. He gathered then that Tal and Caroline were inseparable. Weezie had fluttered about from guest to guest that night, offering drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and of course, a running commentary on the house, which was her pride and joy. She’d been totally blind to Tal’s attentions to Caroline DeSantos.
Weezie was a born hostess. Where she got her talents from, James would never know. Certainly the Foleys were not party givers. Not even very good cooks. Take Bernadette Foley, his own mother. Her idea of dinner was a pot roast cooked to cinderlike dryness, a nice plate of boiled turnips, and carrots on the side.
His sister-in-law, Marian, Weezie’s mother, wasn’t much more comfortable in the kitchen. And for the last ten years or so, Marian had been too tipsy most of the time to pull off much more than a grilled cheese sandwich or maybe one of those jars of marinara sauce dumped on top of a plate of overcooked spaghetti.
It had been a mistake, James now realized, to help Weezie win ownership of the carriage house in the divorce settlement with Tal. But she’d been absolutely adamant on the issue. Tal, the lanky, thin-lipped WASP, had also dug in on the issue of the house, refusing to give up his half.
He’d even brazenly moved Caroline into the big house, betting it was the one thing that would force Weezie out. He underestimated the Foley stubborn streak.
Right now, with the two women glaring at each other, James felt as though he should be wearing a black-and-white striped referee’s shirt instead of his good suit jacket and the tie Janet kept in his office for important clients.
He grabbled two thimbles full of sherry, handed one each to Weezie and Caroline, and then took one for himself. Gerry Blankenship declined with a shake of his head. From the red glow of his nose and the tang of his breath, he’d already had a taste of something this day, and it wouldn’t be anything so mild as ten-dollar-a-gallon sweet sherry.
“You mentioned plans for Beaulieu,” James said to Blankenship, hoping to distract the women. “I understood Miss Mullinax didn’t have any surviving relatives. What happens to the property now?”
“Nothing’s been announced yet,” Gerry demurred, suddenly finding something interesting to stare at on the floor. “The will has to go to probate, plans have to be approved. It’s all quite tentative.”
Caroline smiled broadly. She had beautiful, even, white teeth and the biggest, darkest eyes James Foley had ever seen. A stunner, even though she was a home wrecker, he thought guiltily.
“Gerry loves secrets,” Caroline confided. “But the cat will be out of the bag tomorrow, anyway. Go ahead and tell, Gerry. Or let me, please?”
Gerry Blankenship grabbed a glass of sherry that someone had left sitting on the edge of a sideboard. He downed it in one gulp, then looked around for another. “This might not be the time or place,” he said.
“Pooh,” Caroline said, waving her hand dismissively. “This will be a godsend for this town. Three hundred, four hundred jobs? A capital investment of over three hundred million dollars? Who could argue with that?”
She favored James with a dazzling smile. “You used to be a priest, Mr. Foley. So you know all about confidentiality, right?”
“I’m a lawyer,” James said. “My clients trust me to be discreet.”
“Now, Caroline,” Blankenship started.
“What are you talking about?” Weezie demanded. She’d stopped casting longing glances toward the east parlor and was trying not to stare too hard at the large threadbare oriental rug rolled up against the wall opposite her. James could see her toting up its worth in that adding-machine brain of hers.
Now Weezie was glaring right at Caroline, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, leaning in closer. “What is going to happen to Beaulieu?”
“Gerry?”
Blankenship rocked back and forth on his heels. “Go ahead,” he said finally. “It’s what Anna Ruby wanted. And that’s what this is all about. What she wanted,” he said, his voice taking on a belligerent tone. “Not what the hysterical society people want.” He lowered his voice. “Anna Ruby was concerned about people. Not some moldering old pile of bricks and boards. Our local economy. Jobs. We talked about it often. How we could keep Savannah so that young people could stay here, make a decent living, become part of the community.”
“It’s going to be tremendous,” Caroline bubbled. “All state-of-the-art technology. Coastal Paper Products wants to make this the finest facility of its kind in the world. And the environmental controls…” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “We’re designing it to meet standards the EPA hasn’t even set yet. Nobody will even know it’s here. Back off the road, no smokestacks, no emissions, nothing.”
James swallowed his sherry, wincing at the sweetness. “Are you talking about a paper plant? Here? At Beaulieu?”
Weezie’s jaw dropped. “You can’t…Beaulieu?”
Blankenship harumphed. He squared his shoulders. “As I say, it was Miss Mullinax’s wish. She was a practical woman. And Beaulieu had outlived its usefulness long ago. Have you any idea of what the upkeep on this place would be? And there was no money to do any of it, you know. Miss Mullinax was quite proud of her family’s heritage. Coastal Paper Products wants to call it the Beaulieu-Mullinax Plant. A living memorial.”
“Beaulieu. The house?” Weezie squeaked. “What happens to the house?”
Caroline cut her eyes over at Blankenship. He shrugged.
“Nothing has been decided,” she said. “Coastal would love to restore the house. They’re very preservation-minded. Do you know Phipps and Diane Mayhew?” she asked James.
“Uh, no,” James said.
“Phipps is the president of Coastal Paper Products,” Caroline went on. “Tal just finished designing a guest pavilion for their house out on Turner’s Rock. And I’m designing the new plant. You remember the Mayhews, don’t you, Weezie? Diane came out here with us today, to pay her respects to Miss Anna Ruby. Phipps had to be in a meeting in New York.”
James knew Weezie knew the Mayhews. She’d complained bitterly about the efforts she’d taken to impress the couple back when they’d first moved to Savannah and Tal had gotten wind of all that Yankee money they intended to spend on their “country estate.”
Weezie had told of peeling and deveining ten pounds of shrimp, sorting and picking over five pounds of back-fin crabmeat, even painting the downstairs powder room, all to impress the Mayhews during the “intimate little dinner party” she’d thrown for them.
“Phipps Mayhew gobbled everything I set in front of him. It could have been a bowl of soggy Rice Krispies and he wouldn’t have cared,” Weezie had reported. “And that wife! Diane Mayhew claimed to have a seafood allergy. She nibbled at a lettuce leaf and asked for some kind of imported mineral water I never heard of.”
“Oh,” Caroline said, smiling and waving at someone across the room. “Here’s Diane now.”
A short dumpy woman in an expensive black knit suit tottered over toward them and gave Weezie a tentative sort of smile.
“Well, hello, Mrs. Evans,” the woman said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Diane Mayhew. My husband, Phipps, and I had a lovely dinner at your home when we first moved to town.”
“Hello, Diane,” Weezie said. “Of course I remember you. But my name isn’t Evans. It’s Weezie Foley. Tal and I are divorced, you know.”
Diane Mayhew blinked. “I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “I had no idea. Phipps never mentioned…”
“Actually,” Caroline meowed, “Tal and I are engaged. I’m surprised Phipps didn’t say something.”
“Oh,” Diane Mayhew said, laughing nervously. “You know men. If it isn’t about business, they don’t concern themselves with the petty details of other people’s lives.”
Diane Mayhew had mouse-colored hair, thin eyebrows, and watery blue eyes. Her hands clanked with thick gold chains and bangle bracelets. To James, she looked the essence of out-of-place chic in the heavy black suit. Her face shone with perspiration, and her hairstyle had fallen like a flat soufflé.
Now James saw Weezie’s eyes narrow.
“Caroline has just been telling us that your husband’s company has bought Beaulieu,” Weezie said. “But surely it isn’t possible you plan to tear down this wonderful old house.”
Diane Mayhew gazed around and actually shuddered.
“Wonderful? I don’t think I’ll ever understand you people down here. Why, up home, this place wouldn’t even merit a second look. My goodness, when you consider the history of places like Westchester County in New York, or Bucks County, Pennsylvania, this place is totally unimpressive. And the lack of maintenance, in my opinion, is shocking. Phipps tells me Caroline and her firm have designed a breathtaking new building that will be a real showplace for you people.”
Weezie actually gnashed her teeth. “Diane,” she said in a slow, deliberate drawl, “it may interest you people to know that Beaulieu is the oldest house of its kind on the Georgia coast.” She turned to Blankenship. “Isn’t Beaulieu some kind of historic landmark or something?”
Gerry Blankenship shuddered when she said “landmark.”
“Not at all,” he said quickly. “The architecture is totally unremarkable, and of course, the place is falling apart. But Caroline here is the architect; she can tell you much more about it than I. Those people from the hysteric society have been out here, snooping around, asking a lot of questions, but while she was alive Miss Mullinax would never allow them on the property. She was a free spirit, didn’t believe in letting somebody else tell her what to do with her own property.”
Caroline started to say something but stopped abruptly, giving a side-long glance at a striking-looking woman who was standing in the hallway, staring raptly up at one of the crumbling plaster ceiling medallions. She nudged Blankenship. “Do you see who I see?”
They all turned to find out whom Caroline was looking at.
“Excuse us,” Caroline murmured. She took Blankenship’s hand, and the two of them glided away toward the far corner of the room. Diane Mayhew followed in their wake.
“What was that all about?” James asked.
“Merijoy Rucker,” Weezie said, smiling like the cat that’d found the cream. “No wonder those three shut up so fast.”
“Who is she?” James asked, staring at the brunette who’d spooked Caroline and Blankenship. Something about the girl’s face, the pert upturned nose, the short, sleek dark hair, seemed familiar. She looked about Weezie’s age, but dressed more conservatively, in a sleeveless black silk shift with pearls around her neck and at her ears. Very slender, with endless long legs encased in sheer dark hose. She looked like money.
“I’ve seen her before,” James said.
“Well, she’s Catholic, so I wouldn’t be surprised,” Weezie said. “Plus, she’s the head of the Savannah Preservation League. She was a couple years ahead of me at St. Vincent’s. She married the youngest Rucker; Randy, I think his name is.”
“Rucker Freight,” James said, remembering. “Mrs. Rucker was Catholic, but Mr. Rucker was just rich.”
“Very good, James.” Weezie patted his shoulder approvi
ngly. Because he’d been a priest, James had been excused from playing the “who do you know” game. Now, though, he was a lawyer, and lawyers needed to know all the players. He’d come to depend on Janet and Weezie to help sort it all out.
“Why should Merijoy Rucker make Gerry Blankenship tuck tail and run for cover?” James wondered.
“The SPL is the group that makes sure nobody in the historic district plants so much as a petunia without checking its historical context. If they find out Beaulieu’s to be sold and torn down to build a paper plant, they’ll raise holy hell. Especially Merijoy. She’s got all that Rucker money, and nothing else to do with her time and energy. The woman is a holy terror.”
“You exaggerate,” James said, watching Merijoy Rucker extract a penknife from her pocketbook and start scraping gently at the paint on the windowsill she was standing in front of. Acting casual, she slipped a small plastic bag out of her handbag and scraped the paint chips into it, zipped it shut, then tucked it back in her pocketbook.
“Blankenship never said anything about tearing down Beaulieu,” James said. “Caroline said the company hoped they could save it.”
“That’s just a lot of public-relations baloney,” Weezie said. “You heard what Diane Mayhew said. This house is toast. Most architects want to create their own structures, not glue together somebody else’s. If Tal’s firm is involved, they’ve probably already got some big grandiose scheme drawn up. And a tacky old plantation house with aluminum screened doors and plaster that crumbles when you so much as look at it are not a part of their plan. You can bet on that.”
James was dubious. He’d seen this kind of thing before. “If Miss Mullinax left provisions in her will, the SPL can’t stop the paper company from using the property as they see fit. Can they?”
“Merijoy Rucker could stop a herd of charging bull elephants,” Weezie said. “And she wouldn’t even chip a fingernail doing it. Remember that wrought-iron balcony that was on the front of the townhouse when we bought it? I wanted to tear it off, because it wasn’t even very pretty. And it was a safety hazard. If it had fallen, it would have killed somebody. But Merijoy got wind of it and came over and made me apply for a permit just to take it down. From my own house.”
Savannah Blues Page 4