First Kill All the Lawyers (12 page)

“Why not?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Verbalize, please,” he said.

“Because I don’t want to work with you.”

“So you agree there is something to work
on
.”

She shrugged, which, given their proximity, wasn’t such a good idea.

“Who’ve you talked to?” he continued.

“Nobody. Well, Uncle George.”

“And?”

“Hoke, who thinks I’m nuts.”

“Well, Hoke is either very off or very on.”

Sam remembered that the two men were childhood friends.

“Yes, and?” he pressed.

“Liza.”

“What’d she say?”

“That she thinks someone…” Then Sam realized she couldn’t go on, not with so many ears so close. She shook her head.

“See,” Beau whispered, leaning down, “we need to get together and talk.”

“We
are
together and talking.”

He ignored that. “Have you spoken with Queen again?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

She’d been thinking about that. She had lots of questions for the Widow Ridley. But how was she going to approach her? She couldn’t just call. This was a house of mourning. She looked into Beau’s eyes as she slipped the pearl and diamond earring from her right ear.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Leave it,” she whispered.

“Where?”

“Under there.” She pointed to a chair.

Beau smiled. “When?”

“When the crowd moves.”

“Moves where?”

“What do you—” Then she looked around. The
crowd
had
moved, but she hadn’t. And of course, he’d let her keep standing there, pressed breast to chest.

She flung her earring under the chair and sashayed out of the room without a backward glance. She knew the smirk on his face. She didn’t need to look.

Back home, Harpo met her at the door holding his mouth crooked. The next step, she knew, would be his fake limp.

“Don’t try to make me feel guilty, dog,” she told him. “I’ve been hard at a funeral.”

“He wants a bath,” Peaches said. “When I came home from my meeting at the mayor’s office, he was standing in George’s bathroom staring at the tub.”

“Why do I have a dog who’s a clean freak?”

“You might get in there yourself and take a long soak. It would relax you some.”

“Don’t I look relaxed?”

“No. You look like twenty miles of bad road,” Peaches said flatly.

“Thanks.”

“I’m just telling you what I see. Who’d
you
see today? You see the murderer at Forrest Ridley’s funeral?”

Sam started to answer
What murderer?
but she knew Peaches knew better. Peaches knew
everything.

“I might have,” she said. “I don’t know.”

*

Upstairs, she gave Harpo a quick shampoo and wrapped him in a towel, then rinsed the tub, filled it with hot water and bath oil, and stepped in. After a quarter of an hour, she reached for the phone.

“What’s up, Cookieface?” answered Cutting, her best tracker in San Francisco. “Where are you?”

“
In the tub.”

“God,” he sighed. “It’s times like this I wish I weren’t fifty-nine, fat, and gray.”

“We can still talk dirty.”

“Please, my heart can’t stand it.”

Then Cutting listened carefully to what she wanted. “If Ridley was in a hotel in this town recently, I’ll get it for you, and the names of any roommates,” he promised. “Now, get out of there before you pucker.”

The call to the local Drug Enforcement Administration office was business all the way. Yes, her contact said, Buford Dodd was a suspect in drug drops in Watkin County. But so were lots of other folks.

“These country boys can be mean,” the agent warned. “And I apologize for sounding like a chauvinist oink when I say this, Ms. Adams, but it’s no business for a lady. I wouldn’t sniff around these boys if I was you, even if I knew I had the right tree. They hurt you real bad when they fall.”

Nine

“What
exactly
is it that you want to know, Samantha?” Queen Ridley rose, stiff-backed, from her white sofa. “What are all these questions about that unfortunate ‘surprise’ party leading toward?” She lit a cigarette and exhaled through her lovely nose. “Or is this just some peculiar brand of torture that you reporters reserve for the bereaved?”

“Queen,
I…”
Blew it. Came on too fast, too strong.

“You
are
here as press, aren’t you? Asking questions about my
—our
personal lives. Isn’t that why you left your earring behind?”

Sam’s years of training stood her in good stead. She didn’t miss a beat. “No, truly, that was an accident. And I’m terribly sorry if I’ve offended you.”

Queen stood with her head bowed just a tad. It was quite some pose, the mourning Queen, sad but imperious, perfectly coiffed and made up. Shiny as ever, the Widow Ridley was in gray silk. Had Sam caught her on her way out to a dinner party?

“Thank you for coming by,” Queen was saying now as if she had just ended an audience. She paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m very tired. If you’ll excuse me.” She even managed a break in her voice on those last words, and then she floated upward.

Sam stood there debating. Did she dare slip into the kitchen to say hello to Lona? Or upstairs to see Liza? Too risky. Queen could come back down at any second. She turned and opened the front door.

Suddenly Oglethorpe raced past her like a black and white cannonball.

Lona was right behind him. “Ogle! You bad dog!”

Sam joined the chase down the front steps and across the lawn. The two of them charged along the sidewalk after the galloping dog. They caught up with him a block from Piedmont Park.

“Oh, thank you,” Lona gasped when she had the Dalmatian, whose tongue was lolling in a silly grin, firmly by the collar.

Then they turned and started back toward the house. Lona shook her head. Her imaginary silver bangles clanged silently. “I don’t know
what
I’m going to do with him now, with Mr. Ridley…” She trailed off, her lip trembling.

So Lona had liked Forrest Ridley. Well, why wouldn’t she? As far as Sam knew, everyone had—except Herman Blanding. She made a mental note to see Blanding as soon as possible.

“I heard what you asked Miz Queen about that surprise party,” Lona said. “Did she tell you about the note that came afterwards?”

Sam shook her head. No, she hadn’t—Liza had.

“They talked about it at the breakfast table,” Lona went on. “Miz Queen sure had a bee in her bonnet.”

“And Ridley?”

“He took it in stride, like he did everything else. He just laughed.” Her face clouded over then. “What do you think really happened up there?”

“I think he fell over Apalachee Falls. What do you think?”

“I think he was too smart to do anything foolish like that. I think somebody pushed him.”

“Who?” Sam asked bluntly.

Lona shook her head, but her face said she had her suspicions.

Two young neighborhood boys yelled greetings at Oglethorpe as they wheeled past on their bicycles. The dog lunged against Lona’s grip, but she was stronger than she looked. He was going nowhere.

“Now who’s gonna walk this monster all the way across the park every night?”

“Is that where Ridley took him?”

“I never was sure. They took off in this direction most nights. Right after supper, just as I’d be heading out. I don’t know exactly where they went.”

“Or for how long?”

“Nope. As I said, it was always when I was going. But Miz Queen used to say…” She paused.

Sam waited. She knew Lona didn’t need urging. She’d gotten onto the woman’s rhythm by now. The delays were caused by her thoughtfulness; she was weighing and measuring.

“Miz Queen used to be after Mr. Ridley all the time. Said he spent a lot more time with that dog than he did with her.”

“Was that true?”

“Just the two of them?” She nodded. “That’s for sure. But then”—a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth—“Ogle didn’t give him any backtalk.”

“You know what I’d like to know, Lona? I’d really like to know where Mr. Ridley went every night with this dog. Do you think if you gave him his head, he’d go on that same walk?”

“Looks like it to me. Every chance he gets, he heads out in this direction.”

“Not now, because I think Queen might wonder,” Sam said. “But some other time…”

Lona nodded. “I’ll see where he wants to go. And I’ll get you that party note. You’ll find out what happened to Mr. Ridley.”

It was a statement, not a question. Sam wished she felt that confident.

*

“Will he know what this is in reference to?” asked the secretary in one of those officious voices that made Sam want to fire off a smart answer. But the woman held the keys to the kingdom, so Sam held her tongue.

“Yes, he will,” she nicey-niced into the phone.

But of course he wouldn’t. Edison Kay would have no idea why Samantha was calling him, but he wouldn’t care, either—he found her an attractive woman. Sam knew that. Years ago as a cub reporter, she had inspected her arsenal and evaluated all its weapons.

“Why, Samantha dear, to what do I owe this pleasure? No, don’t tell me now. Why don’t you tell me over lunch?”

“Why, that’s awfully sweet of you,” she crooned,
standing off to one side in her mind and listening to how well she dropped into her Southern belle voice these days. “But I’m afraid I have a previous engagement. What I called for, Edison, is to make an appointment with you for some other time.”

“I’m at your disposal.”

“Actually, I’d like to talk to both you and Kay Kay—and Totsie. We’ve decided to do a longer piece on Forrest Ridley for the Sunday magazine, a profile, and I’d like to have the input of those who knew him best.”

She knew that Edison wouldn’t know that that was not the sort of thing she did—nor did the
Constitution
know about any such story. The whole thing was a fabrication.

She really wanted to know more about Ridley and his practice and what skeletons might therein lie, and who better to ask than oily Edison, who was not only Ridley’s partner but such a good friend that he had delivered his eulogy? She was also curious about Kay Kay, who had bad-mouthed the deceased’s wife at his wake. And Totsie… There was more to Totsie than met the eye, and she’d known Ridley since the day she was born.

“Why, that’s a wonderful idea. I’ll have to check with Kay Kay’s calendar. That woman’s busier than I am.” He chuckled. There was a pause while he stuck a cigar in his mouth; Sam could hear him sucking on it. “Now, you’re sure you won’t change your mind about joining me for lunch?”

*

“Peaches, you have outdone yourself again,” George said, pushing back from the dinner table later that evening. She’d made crab cakes, pencil-thin
asparagus, a green salad. For dessert there’d been the first of the season’s strawberries over her shortcake.

“Glad you liked it,” Peaches said, smiling. Though she could be vinegary, she was all honey when someone praised her cooking.

“One of these days I’m going to have to get my friend Annie to write one of her food articles on you,” said Sam. “You’re a walking cookbook just waiting for the doing.”

“Don’t say that,” George protested. “We see her little enough as it is. I couldn’t bear for Peaches to become a star.”

“Get out of here,” Peaches said, but she was still smiling. “Scat, both of you. I’ve got work to do.”

“Why don’t we take our coffee out on the front porch?” Sam suggested.

“A capital idea,” said George.

The porch was actually a terrace, a stone-floored continuation of the front entrance, which no one ever used. They settled into black wrought-iron chairs sporting a patina of green.

“
Now
I remember why we never sit out here,” George grumbled. “Horace,” he said as the man approached with a tray loaded with the small silver after-dinner coffeepot and George’s cognac. “Tomorrow I want all this furniture to go to the Lighthouse for the Blind’s resale shop. And I want you to find me some wicker chairs with soft cushions and a good-sized table to match.”

“They won’t hold up.” Horace was ever practical about George’s money.

“I don’t give a damn. If they rot, we’ll get new ones next year, and every year after that. I am not going to spend my old age with this goddamned
uncomfortable furniture stamping its imprint into my butt.”

“Yes, George,” Horace said. “I’ll call Rich’s tomorrow.” Then, just as he was about to turn away, he slipped an envelope in front of Samantha as if it were an afterthought.