Ciji Ware (68 page)

“Please, Doctor Gibbs,” Jack said harshly. “It’s late. Let’s not play stupid games.”

“No… I’m serious,” the doctor protested. Bailey put the palms of both hands flat on the table. “Let the sanctuary buy all your land for twenty-five thousand. That’s under market value, of course, but we’ll allow you to continue to
live
in your house as long as you want to—just as if it still belonged to you—till you die. That way, there’ll be no toxic dump, and you can be buried on your own property with the rest of your kin. Now, if that’s not a generous offer, what is?” he said, beaming. “I’ll even throw in payin’ your housekeeper’s salary so Ava can work full-time for you and look after you real good, for as long as you need it. What do you say?”

Before Drake could respond to Bailey’s newest proposal, Jack cut in icily.

“And I will sue Mr. Drake for welchin’ on a deal that was all but signed, and I’ll sue you too, Gibbs, for interfering with a pending legal contract.”

“He’s just blowing smoke,” Sim declared angrily. “Pay no attention, Mr. Drake. I think that’s a brilliant idea, Bailey. What do you think, Mr. Drake? Wouldn’t that meet all your concerns for your future well-being?”

Jack turned to Francesca. “Oh, I think Mr. Drake should pay
strict
attention to what we might do, don’t you, Ms. Hayes?” he asked sharply. “Please explain, in detail, how our lawyers can tie up Mr. Drake’s property in court till he
dies
, if we have to, and then go after his heirs.”

The reactions in the room to Jack’s threats ran the gamut from outrage to shock to dismay. However, one person appeared totally unruffled.

“Really, Mr. Ebert,” Francesca scolded mildly, “there’s no need to harass these good people like that.”

“Look, Miz Lawyer Lady,” Jack growled, dropping all pretense of civility even toward someone ostensibly on his own side, “if you don’t have the balls for this work, go back to Fog City, will you please?”

“Oh, I have the ‘balls’ for it, as you so indelicately phrase it,” Francesca replied with a cool, appraising stare. “The problem is, neither you nor I have the authority from our employers to threaten to sue these parties. May I suggest that you pay attention to the wishes of your superiors at Able Petroleum and keep your temper under control while I work out a compromise here?”

Jack appeared speechless with indignation. Meanwhile, Sim swiftly reached beneath his chair and laid out on the table a series of photographs he’d taken of Bailey’s birdhouses.

“Here’s why Ms. Hayes’s suggestion that we negotiate a compromise makes eminent sense, Jack,” Sim said pleasantly. “As I pointed out to her yesterday, you could have a public relations disaster on your hands if you force Mr. Drake to sell to you.”

Jack looked disdainfully at the photographs. “A bunch of birdhouses,” he scoffed. “Big fuckin’ deal.”

“It’ll be a big deal to my sister-in-law,” Daphne blurted. “You remember Corlis McCullough, don’t you, Jack? The TV reporter who covered our aborted wedding? She’s back at WJAZ. I’ll just bet she could persuade her station to do a story about a big, bad oil company whose products are suspected of causing cancer from Texas to Louisiana and points north.”

“That’s right, Jack,” Sim added quickly. “How would it look if Able Petroleum held these two courtly old gentlemen hostage with threats that Mr. Drake had better sell all his land to them—or else.” He shook his head solemnly. “Or that Doctor Gibbs must surrender his lifelong dream of a bird sanctuary for endangered species made famous in the area by America’s most beloved naturalist, John James Audubon?”

Sim paused for breath, and Daphne added innocently, “My guess is that in no time, you’d have a producer from
Dateline
or
60 Minutes
down here photographing Bailey’s adorable birdhouses and picking up on the story where Corlis McCullough left off.”

“Daphne’s sister-in-law has wonderful media contacts, I hear,” Maddy chimed in.

“Try again,” Jack retorted. “Y’all aren’t the only ones who know how to work the media. Once Francesca here takes a hike, I’ll get the home office back on track and they’ll hire an army of lawyers and publicists who can get the job done.”

“Well…” Bailey said slowly. “Neither Cyrus nor I wanted to do this, but we have one more photograph to show you, Mr. Ebert—and it isn’t pretty.” Bailey pulled a large manila envelope from under his folding chair.

Jack shook his head in mock resignation. “Another bird about to go extinct doesn’t make a bit of difference. If you both don’t want to get sued and have all your assets tied up till you croak, you’d better—”

“First of all,” Bailey cut in with barely controlled fury, “Cyrus hasn’t signed
anything
, and you know it. Ms. Hayes here knows it. We
all
know it.” He pulled out a large X-ray and held it up to the fluorescent lights overhead.

“Oh,
no
?” Maddy swiveled her head from one old friend to the other. “Cyrus!” she cried, anguished. “Bailey! Which of you is ill?”

Daphne and Sim were as startled as Maddy by the X-ray film at which Bailey pointed the tip of his pencil. Daphne reached for her cousin’s hand while everyone around the table stared at the medical photo.

Bailey addressed Cyrus. “May I tell them the sad news we discovered today, old friend?” he asked softly, his voice full of sympathy and compassion.

Cyrus nodded and stared dully at his hands in his lap.

“My housekeeper, Leila, told me that Cyrus has been suffering bad headaches and all sorts of upsets during the last year,” Bailey Gibbs began. “It concerned me right away that it might be somethin’ serious, y’see, because those were the first symptoms my poor, dear Caroline had. So I went over to Cyrus’s this mornin’ and offered to take him right down to the hospital I used to administer in town, and got the nice people there to run a bunch of tests… X-rays, an MRI… that sort of thing.”

Maddy began to sniffle. Daphne reached around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze as tears welled in her own eyes.

Bailey nodded solemnly. “Mr. Drake here’s got a brain tumor, Mr. Ebert. The same damned
rare
kind that killed my darlin’ Caroline.” He patted Cyrus’s sleeve a second time. “We know much better, now, how to manage the pain, but you’ll need home care, and maybe hospice at the end.”

Cyrus looked up and nodded stoically. “Don’t want to be a burden on my kids,” was all he said.

“You see, Mr. Ebert, looks like Cyrus, here, has a glioblastoma multiforma, the same deadly and untreatable brain tumor that’s killed so many people ’round the South.” He nodded at Sim, and added, “Mr. Hopkins here knows as well as I do that these illnesses were probably caused by uncontrolled oil drilling and the petrochemicals used to defoliate and fertilize the cotton fields in these parts for the last fifty years.”

“No go, fellas,” Jack said snidely. “You can’t show me absolute proof that these chemicals are directly linked to the specific cancers you’re talkin’ about.”

“That’s what the tobacco companies used to say,” Sim challenged him. “‘Show us that nicotine is addictive and that smoking causes lung cancer.’ Eventually the other side had its proof.”

Bailey spoke up again. “Mr. Ebert, I don’t think you’d like one of those network exposé programs Daphne mentioned to insinuate to the entire country that first your company gives folks ’round here cancer, and then it tries to steal their family burial grounds. I may be a simple, country doctor, but it doesn’t sound like good public relations, to my way of thinkin’.”

“May I say something?” Francesca intervened briskly. “Look, Jack, if I thought Able Petroleum could take these people to the mat and pull the trigger, I’d be the first one to recommend we haul them into court and make Mr. Drake, here, sell you his land.” She pointed to Sim’s photographs of Bailey’s birdhouses. “But just
look
at these,” she insisted. “I’ve seen Dr. Bailey’s bird sanctuary. There’s a very high cuteness factor at work here. If
Dateline
or someone did a segment out there, you’d be a dead duck, so to speak.” She glanced at Sim and then at the rest of those present around the table. “Know when to fold your tent, Jack. It makes life a lot easier.”

Jack’s expression was devoid of emotion. He appeared, in fact, barely to be listening when Cyrus spoke up.

“Mr. Ebert, I think Bailey’s offer is a lot more attractive than yours… so I’m gonna accept it.” The taciturn old man added, with the ghost of a smile, “I hope your company isn’t gonna sue me, but if they do, they’ll be suing a dead man, and that’ll look pretty bad for you on TV.”

Jack remained silent but shot a look of loathing in the direction of Sim and Daphne.

“I promise, though,” Cyrus continued with a faint twinkle in his eye, “to consider the Ebert-Petrella Funeral Home when the time comes… I surely will.” He turned to address his neighbor of more than seventy years. “What do you say, Bailey? Let’s us go home. I’m mighty tired.”

“We can sign the lifetime tenancy agreement tomorrow, Cyrus, and we’ll write out that check right along with it, won’t we Maddy? Daphne?” Bailey declared. “And then I’ll ask Leila to make us all a round of mint juleps to celebrate your keepin’ your home.”

“Mighty kind of you, Bailey.”

Jack stared stonily as the two elderly gentlemen pushed back their chairs and slowly rose to leave.

“As your attorney, Jack,” Francesca spoke up as she snapped shut her briefcase, “my high-priced advice is to back off from these people and save Able Petroleum a lot of money and grief. I recommended to your employers today to stop lobbying in Jackson for this particular scheme and to put the toxic dump someplace less—shall we say—environmentally sensitive. I suggested across the river in Louisiana, where you appear to have stronger…
connections
than you do in Mississippi.” She cast a long, hard look at Sim and Daphne and then stood up. “So long, everybody. I’ll hitch a ride with Doctor Gibbs to a motel in town, pick up a rental car tomorrow, and catch a flight out of New Orleans.” To Jack she added, “I’ll email you my bill, including expenses. Send the check to my firm in San Francisco.”

Bailey, Cyrus, and Jack’s hired gun walked out of the room. An awkward silence descended while Daphne dared to glance over at her former fiancé. Jack’s anger was palpable, and the shell-shocked expression on his face reminded her of the moment she had blurted her knowledge of his affair with Cindy Lou Mallory to the assembly of five hundred wedding guests inside Saint Louis Cathedral.

“Well, let us know what your company decides to do,” Sim said without rancor, rising from his chair and helping Madeline to her feet. “If Doctor Gibbs purchases Cyrus Drake’s land and Able Petroleum takes its disposal problems somewhere else, I’m sure all parties will agree to sign a confidentiality statement.”

Jack’s thin lips had settled into a hard line. He seemed to be willing himself not to lose control of his boiling emotions. “Sure thing,” he replied finally. Then he inhaled deeply and affected a shrug. Daphne hoped that if they all kept their cool he would accept his defeat with reasonably good grace. “Let me take you out the back way, okay?” he suggested. “It’s the shortest route to the parking lot.”

For a split second, Daphne hesitated. “We parked out front, Jack,” she said.

“Well, you’ll have to go out this way anyway because I told the night watchman to put on the security alarm and lock up the front of the building before he went home.”

Daphne, Maddy, and Sim were halfway down the hallway following in Jack’s wake before she wondered how Bailey and the others had gotten out just now. The instant they passed through the unmarked door into a room filled with steel gurneys and metal sinks, Daphne knew they’d made a horrible mistake. Jack held the door for them and then slammed it shut, turning a key in the lock and pocketing it.

“Jack, what are you doing?” Daphne demanded.

Sim didn’t wait for the answer and strode to the double doors on the opposite side of the room that led to a loading bay. He tried both handles.

“They’re always kept locked,” Jack announced. “Neighborhood kids try to get in here, y’know? Daring each other to do nasty stuff like we all did when we were that age.” He turned around to stare steadily at Daphne. “Don’t you remember, Daph, when your mama used to bring you ’round all the time to the old Ebert-Petrella place in New Orleans? You didn’t much like it, did you? You were always too much of a goody-two-shoes to have any fun.”

Daphne averted her eyes from Jack’s and glanced around the embalming room. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks that at least none of the gleaming aluminum gurneys was occupied. The room was sterile and antiseptic, with metal tanks and plastic hoses clustered around two industrial-size sinks set into a long metal table that ran along one wall. On the opposite wall stood a high set of shelves with a row of three gallon, amber glass bottles full of embalming fluids. On the lower shelf sat trays piled high with sinister-looking metal instruments rendering their surroundings ominous and surreal.

Cousin Maddy was rooted to the floor near the door they had entered, her expression filled with horror and dismay. Sim swiftly returned to her side and put a protective arm around her trembling shoulders.