Whipped Cream and Piano Wire

by Winnie Simpson

  That scared me, but I straightened my spine and followed him inside. Frigid air slapped me, the full-throated hum of the air conditioner inviting me into Freddie’s world. I expected walls hung with all manner of killing implements—guns, knives, maybe even a grenade perched on a bookshelf below a dirty military banner. Instead, when I stepped inside the door my mouth fell open. The room was full of animals—racoon, muskrat, possum, tiny mice and even alligator, all carved in fine lifelike detail from wood that had been polished to a sheen. On a table stood a half-finished pelican with a gaping maw.

  “You’re an artist,” I said, “a sculptor.”

  His tawny eyes softened with pleasure. “Not what you thought, is it?”

  “I’m amazed,” I said. That was an understatement. My brain was engaged in a 180-degree turn from my previous view of Freddie.

  He gestured toward the pelican. “Feathered bastard’s giving me trouble. I want that right wing to be opening up and flapping, but I can’t get it right.”

  I wandered through the room, stroking the muskrat’s smooth back and the alligator’s bumpy snout. “These are exquisite.” The level of detail on the animals was impressive. “How long have you been carving?”

  “Started in Nam. Just small pieces. Things I could carry in my pack. It’s a bad idea to smoke in the jungle. Too many folks sniffing the air. I needed to keep my hands busy. Later, when I got back, it helped me calm down.”

  “You did the hawk in Cutler’s study.” I remembered the bird in pride of place on Cutler’s desk.

  “You noticed that one. Yeah, that’s an early piece. I could do a better one now, but Cutler wanted to keep it.”

  “Do you sell many of them?” I asked. I was trying to reconcile my idea of Freddie as a deadbeat with this Freddie, who could probably support himself with his art.

  His face lit up, amused at my question. “You’re not kidding,” he said. “Folks in big houses pay well for a fancy piece of carving on the mantle. They like native critters, as real as possible—long as they aren’t moving. In fact, they tell me I’m a hot item in the art market. Crazy, ain’t it?” He patted the head of a cougar rendered in a pale yellow wood. “This guy’s going to a gallery in Cincinnati.” His gaze wandered around the room, stopping on each member of the menagerie. “All of these are sold already, and I have commissions for the next two years. They’re my ticket off the island.”

  “Cutler knew,” I said.

  “Sure. He contacted some galleries, made some good connections for me. Brought people by to see stuff when they were at the house.”

  If Cutler didn’t leave his house to Freddie as a means to support him, then why? “Why do you think he left you his house?”

  “Dunno,” he shrugged.

  “It’s about Vietnam, isn’t it.” That was the only explanation for Cutler’s bequest. He must have felt he owed Freddie for something.

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About Nam? Fuck no. I’m done with that. Done. Done.”

  “Look, I think whatever happened over there may be why Cutler Mead was killed. I need to find out to help Theo. I’m begging you.” I never expected to be saying this to Freddie, of all people, but if I had to lay everything on the line with this guy to save Theo, I’d do it.

  “I can’t. I won’t. Haven’t opened my mouth ‘bout that crap since we shipped home.”

  “That’s why Cutler left you this house,” I said. “To reward you for keeping your mouth shut about what happened over there, even after you got yourself together.” I thought out loud. “More than that. You ignored what he was doing to the rest of the squad. He had something on Scot that forced him to give Cutler shares in the company. He pressured Tommy to invest in Cutler’s deals. He used some kind of pressure on Drew to make him go along.”

  “It wasn’t my shit. Nothing I could do about it.”

  “But you kept quiet.”

  Freddie dropped into a beat-up leather club chair. He’d picked up a carving that was so small I couldn’t make out what it was. He turned the piece over and over in his hands. I was certain he was thinking it over.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “But I’ll tell you who can.”

  “Who?”

  “Drew Littlefield. If anybody’ll spill, it’s Drew.”

  “Thank you.” I moved toward him to shake his hand. He put his own hand out palm forward like a cop stopping traffic.

  “Thank me by moving your ass out of here.”

  23

  Drew Tells

  After the revelation of my evening with Freddie, it took me several days to corner Drew Littlefield. Either Drew was dodging me or he was a very busy lawyer, too busy to even answer my calls. I suspected that word had gotten out that I was asking questions about Cutler’s buddies, and they were circling their wagons.

  But at last, after three days of leaving messages, Drew responded, offering to meet me at his home. Mike Bristol’s warning sounded in my brain. Drew’s office was located in a bustling complex near the Village center. Drew lived on the far end of St. Simons island in an exclusive enclave of homes, each sitting on multi-acre lots. If I met him at home, I could be agreeing to a secluded rendezvous with a murderer. On the other hand, Drew didn’t scare me one tenth as much as Freddie, and I’d entered his lair and come out unscathed. I’d chance it.

  While Sea Island remained the more prestigious and exclusive place to live, over the last decades, many affluent islanders had moved to newer developments on the northern end of St. Simons. Drew and Linda Littlefield’s house was a modern version of old South coastal living, a combination of white frame and stucco, wrapped by a two-story porch. Dark green wooden shutters framed each of the tall windows—upstairs and down—that let light into all sides of the house. The main entrance was on the second level, approached by a mirror image double staircase that curved up from the driveway to the porch. I climbed up the stairs and rang the doorbell mounted into the molding. Drew opened the dark oak door before the chime had faded.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me,” I said. This was going to be a delicate interview, so I started out with an excess of Southern charm.

  Drew was no slouch in the charm department himself. Clearly, his mamma had raised him right. “It’s my pleasure, Ms. Pickering. I’m glad you called by.” He pulled the massive door full open and gestured me inside.

  The great room could have been a cover shot for Southern Living magazine. Deep upholstered armchairs and two sofas were set around an impressive glass cocktail table that perched atop a twisted piece of driftwood. The matching sofas of pale aqua were buried under designer cushions that echoed the fabric on the chairs. High above, a sunlight in the cathedral ceiling encouraged luxuriant ficus and rubber plants around the edges of the room.

  “What a beautiful room,” I said, hoping that I didn’t have to sit on the sofa and risk smothering by cushion.

  “My wife designed our house. She should have been a professional.”

  The size of the room dwarfed him, and I wondered why his wife had built a place that made her husband appear so small. Then I remembered one of my former law partners. He was a mediocre lawyer, but brilliant at getting business. He had a similar room where he entertained clients and their spouses. Theo said that Linda Littlefield was a renowned hostess on an island full of them. She probably used this impressive room to snare Drew’s clients and grease his political career—a seat on the county commission and multiple terms on the zoning board.

  Drew invoked another page of Southern Living and insisted upon serving iced tea and cheese straws. We chatted idly, until I gauged the time was right to explain why I was there. “You may have already heard, I’m trying to help Theo by looking into Mr. Mead’s death.”

  Drew pulled his feet under him, and started to rise. I feared he would bolt, so I launched into my appeal
.

  “The police are investigating a lot of avenues, but since Theo was with Cutler before his death, I’m concerned about her. And I know Theo. She’s not the violent type, and she cared deeply for him.” The last was a blatant attempt on my part to manipulate Drew, since, of all the men I’d met thus far, he seemed the only one who mourned Cutler.

  His shoulders sagged at this statement, and he sat back down. I took that as a good sign. We sat in silence for a minute, Drew twisting his hands as he thought, until he said, “All right. What do you want?”

  “I think you might be able to help find Cutler’s killer.” I said.

  “How?”

  “I’ve just come from talking to Freddie Somerset.”

  “Sarge? What did he tell you?” Drew grabbed the arms of his chair and pulled himself to the edge of the seat.

  “He told me that you could explain what happened in Vietnam.”

  Drew shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s not really my story.” He gave me a pleading look.

  I ground my teeth. I was losing patience with this excuse. Drew squirmed under my stare. “Don’t you want Cutler’s murderer to be caught?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice agonized. “He was my friend. The others are thrilled to bits that he’s gone. Even his wife is happy, though she won’t let on.”

  “Don’t you owe it to your friend for the truth to come out?” Maybe that was unkind of me, seeing his obvious misery, but I couldn’t let up now. I had to get him to talk.

  “I do.” He swallowed. “I do. But I don’t know the whole story. Wasn’t there for it all.”

  “Just tell me what you know.”

  He rubbed his knees and looked away. “It all started after Paul Seller was killed.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “You could never understand the conditions.”

  I wasn’t going to pretend that I did. Now that he had gotten started, I stayed quiet to give him space to tell it.

  “We were in the bush. Seemed like we’d been humping through there for weeks. We’d just passed this village, bunch of hooches—they call it a village—and on the road this kid waved like he wanted to talk.

  “Paul should’ve known better, we weren’t rookies. Kid starts running away and Paul follows him full tilt—right into a tiger pit.”

  All through this Drew had been staring over my head at nothing. Now he lowered his chin and looked directly at me, his eyes black, unreadable.

  “Deep hole. Sharp bamboo stakes. They cover ‘em with a layer of brush. Nothing to break your fall.”

  My stomach knotted at the gruesome picture, but I nodded I understood. He shook his head that I didn’t, but kept going.

  “They lower me down on a rope ‘cause I’m the lightest, but when I reach Paul, stakes are sticking into him so far—all the way through him but he’s alive.” Drew covered his mouth with one hand, as if he were going to be sick. He put his hand back on his knee, rubbing it. “I can’t move him. Every time I touch him he screams. He’s bleedin’ out—nothin’ we can do.”

  “Sarge radios back, and gets orders to sit tight. Helo on the way, but we’re low priority. So we sit and listen. Paul screaming and crying.” Tears were standing in Drew’s eyes. “Sarge manages to pass him down some ludes. Then he goes quiet. Whole time we’re looking over our shoulders for Charlie—the kid would have passed the word we were there.”

  I swallowed hard, imagining the terror of sitting—waiting for the enemy to pick them off—unable to move away while their friend is dying in agony.

  “We’d seen a lot of our guys buy the farm. We’d killed a bunch of VC. But Paul’s dying pushed everybody’s buttons. Sarge takes some pills and gets stoned. Not totally out of it, but just not caring that we’re spread out and slacking. He’s mostly all hard ass when we’re out.”

  “Wasn’t Cutler in charge?” I asked, trying to make sense of where he fit in to the story.

  “He wasn’t out with us.” Drew shrugged. “Wasn’t unusual for Freddie to run things. When Paul’s gone, we manage to get some ropes under him and pull him out, then move into the village. Shoot the old men, torch the huts. Standard operating procedure for booby traps.” He stopped, looking down at his feet. “It gets out of control.”

  I was pretending I was watching a movie, trying to put some distance between what he was saying and my brain. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears and walk away, but I had to hear the whole story. “Go on,” I said.

  “I can’t stop them,” Drew said, not hearing me. He was talking to himself now, off in his memories. “Well, I did try.”

  “You tried to stop them from what?” I asked, to pull Drew back to the story. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest, but I forced myself to ask.

  “Scotty grabs a woman from where she’s hiding behind some water-buffalo cart. There’s a kid with her, real young, still squalling when Scot drags the woman into one of the hooches.”

  “Is that S.O.P., too?” I asked, deliberately making my voice cold, to hide the revulsion I was feeling.

  Drew didn’t seem to notice my tone. “Sometimes. Scot had gone there before.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “I go to find Sarge. He’s at the other end of the village, talking on the radio to the chopper. I wave to get his attention, but he’s looking up—looking for the helo—doesn’t see me.”

  “From behind me I hear Tommy’s voice. ‘Yow. Goddamn cunt.’”

  “I turn back toward the hooch. Scotty comes out the doorway and looks around.”

  “‘Little man,’ he yells at me. ‘Get the fuck over here and help us fire this up.’”

  “I follow him into the hut. The woman’s sprawled on the grass mat, pajamas ripped off, legs spread. Her head’s at a really weird angle. ‘Shit. Oh shit, Scotty,’ I say. ‘Shuttup!’ Scotty says. ‘Help me get this dump lit up.’ Tommy’s over in the corner. Licking the side of his hand. Blood’s oozing. ‘Bit me, the bitch,’ Tommy says. ‘Stop whining.’ Scotty tells him. ‘You enjoyed it. Let’s zippo this and get the fuck out of here.’

  “Right then I hear the chopper coming in. I back out and run toward Freddie.

  “When I reach him I point at Scotty and Tom. They’re piling up dried leaves and reeds to make the fire real big so there’d be nothing left. Sarge heads back across the packed dirt, stands nose to nose with Scotty. Sarge brushes him aside and peers into the hut. He wheels around and yells at me to hurry up and finish loading Paul’s body on the chopper so we can get outta there. We’re about ready to take off—the cargo bay’s still open, waiting for the last guys to jump on—I’m in the open bay door waiting for them to board, when I see a soldier I don’t recognize. Not one of our guys. The smoke prob’ly caught his attention. He pokes his head into the hooch where Scotty and Tommy are. He goes in, but the thing is, he never comes out. Scot runs out with his personal handgun drawn. Tommy follows, both bent over and running for the ‘copter. By now the hut’s burning like hell.”

  When Drew fell silent, I asked, “What happened then?”

  “We flew out. Made it back to base after a bumpy ride. Next morning I went and told Cutler. He met with them and told them to keep quiet and he’d cover for them. Nothing ever came out about it, no inquiry or anything.”

  So the whole thing had stayed buried all these years. But Scot and Tom were still afraid of Cutler. He must have some leverage. ”What proof is there?” I asked.

  “Scotty took the guy’s dog tags. Cutler made him hand them over.”

  The dog tags. Scot Raybourn must have pawed the body, maybe unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt, to get to those tags and pull the chain off over the man’s head. I had a sour taste in my mouth that no mouthwash would cleanse. “Why? Why would he do such a thing?”

  “They took the tags so the body wouldn’t be identified, even after it was burned.”

 
“Alright, but why keep them?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Scotty.”

  “So all this time Cutler had those dog tags, and he was holding that over Scot Raybourn’s head,” I summed up.

  “Not just the dog tags,” Drew said. “Cutler made Scotty give him his handgun, too.”

  “If Scot Raybourn still had his rifle, what good did taking his handgun do?”

  Drew looked up at me, squinting to make me understand. “He didn’t shoot the friendly with his rifle; he shot him with his personal weapon. The army was very careful with our guys’ bodies. If they found a handgun bullet, they’d document it.”

  “And could match it to that gun,” I said. “Where’re the tags and the gun now?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  So that’s what y’all have been searching for, I thought. Now it made sense.

  24

  Where’s Theo?

  I staggered, almost falling as I made my way down the stairs from the Littlefield’s porch, my feet and brain numb. In the driveway I opened the car door and fell butt first into the front seat. I sat there, bent over with my elbows on my knees. I tasted bile at the back of my throat. If Drew was telling the truth, those men—prominent businessmen on the island—had murdered one of their own after raping and killing a Vietnamese woman. They had covered up those atrocities for decades. The dead man had to be one of the MIAs whose family and the Army were still looking for. Could I believe what I’d just heard? After all I had no experience in war. Drew could have told me anything about their experience in Vietnam, and I lacked the background to cross examine him.

  Half in and half out of the car, I thought about it. Drew Littlefield wasn’t capable of making the story up. He had kept this secret for years. He wouldn’t have told me the story now if Cutler hadn’t died. Was his guilt wearing him down?

  “Those smug bastards,” I said to the asphalt driveway. Even as my tongue formed the words, I was ashamed of myself. What a hypocrite I was. Those same men had endured hell while I’d been dating and partying. They were young, trapped fighting a war half the world away, friends dying, and knowing their own country wasn’t fully committed to their efforts. Freddie was right—I had no clue. I might have committed the same kind of atrocities if I’d been in that war. That didn’t mean I could ignore what I’d just been told, but the realization of my ignorance tempered my disgust at what I’d heard.