First Kill All the Lawyers (2 page)

“Because he was…”

“Because he was helping some boys fly such bodacious amounts of cocaine into his county that the hillsides were beginning to look like winter in Vermont.”

“And you think corruption like this goes on throughout the state?”

“No, I don’t think so. I know so,” George said. “My esteemed fellow partners at Simmons and Lee didn’t give me that gold watch when I retired for being stupid.”

“So you agree with me there’s a story there?”

“Of course there’s a story. But what I am trying to impress on you in my humble, inarticulate way is that you would most likely get yourself killed investigating it.”

Sam ignored that little bit of business since they both knew that George Adams was one of the most gifted orators ever to address a Georgia courtroom.

“
Now
you should listen to him,” said Horace, reaching in to remove Samantha’s empty plate.

“Horace, maybe you could just hold up cue cards for Sam.”

Horace went on as if George hadn’t spoken. “You don’t want to be messing around with country lawmen. That is
bad
business.”

“I don’t know why she wants to be poking around in such troublesome things anyway,” Peaches put in. “Why can’t you write about nice things?”

“I did that story about your reading program,” Sam reminded her.

Peaches sniffed. “I hope you didn’t do it just because you thought it would shut me up.”

“No, I did it because it’s something worthwhile that people ought to know about. But you know that was way out of my territory. One doesn’t
investigate
things that are nice.”

“Well, you ought to.”

“Next thing you know, Peaches, you’re going to tell me that my place is in the home.”

That was a joke of long standing, for the Adams home, which Peaches ruled as housekeeper, was frequently the last place one would find her. Having returned to school and graduated from college in her early forties, Peaches had never looked back once she got going and was now, among other things, one of the mainstays of the city’s Each One Teach One campaign against illiteracy.

And Sam knew that Peaches was as proud of Sam’s professional accomplishments as if she were her own daughter, but it was Peaches’ way to grumble. It was the Adams way to tease, so Sam kept going. “Or you’re going to try to get me married off again. Sure you don’t want me to find myself a nice doctor or lawyer and settle down?”

“That’s okay. You just go right ahead and make fun of an old woman,” Peaches said.

Horace played an imaginary violin behind Peaches’ back.

“I see you there, Horace Johnson!” She swatted at him without turning around.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Horace asked. “Witches have eyes in the back of their heads.”

“Go right on ahead. But one of these days she’s going to wake up dead and be sorry she didn’t do
something normal.” Peaches turned and pushed through the swinging door. “Doctor, lawyer, indeed,” she grumbled as she went.
“
That
wouldn’t kill her, at least.”

“Why don’t you say what’s on your mind, Peaches?” Sam called after her.

“Speaking of lawyers,” George said, shoving back from the table, “if I could interrupt you, there’s something I want to talk about, Sam. Horace”—he nodded at the other man—“thanks for the lovely dinner. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to move into the library where we can hear ourselves think.”

*

The room was warm and comfortable, its walls lined with cherrywood bookshelves that Horace, whose hobby was woodworking, had built years earlier. There wasn’t room for another volume here; the shelves were jammed with George’s collection of first-edition fiction and a vast assortment of oversized travel volumes. His law books were in his study; more bookcases lined hallways and bedroom walls throughout the large three-story house.

Horace had laid a fire in the glass-screened fireplace, for even though it was early April and the air was heavy with the scent of Atlanta’s famous azaleas, dogwood, and wisteria, this particular evening there was a bit of a nip in the air. And Horace, who like George was almost 70, knew all too well that the older folks got, the colder their bones.

Samantha sat in one of a pair of brown leather easy chairs and gazed with affection at her uncle, who sat in the other. He had always been her favorite relative, and she his. When her parents had died in the 1962 plane crash near Paris that killed 122 members of the
Atlanta Art Association, other aunts and uncles and family friends had offered to take her in, but it was George who had prevailed.

“I need her as much as she needs me,” he’d said, and the others had acquiesced. These two had always had a special bond. In fact, it had been George rather than Samantha’s father who had chosen her name—at the time hardly a popular appellation for a little Southern belle.

“Sam Adams is a venerable choice,” George had said at her christening. And it was also a legitimate family name, the Atlanta Adamses tracing their ancestry back to that Boston clan, which made Sam a member of the DAR as well as a Daughter of the Confederacy. “Besides, I looked up
Samantha,
and the name means
listener
,”
her uncle had said. “God knows we could use somebody in this family who can do that.”

So it was natural that George and Peaches and Horace had adopted the favored but orphaned Samantha. They had held her hand through her grief and delighted as she reclaimed a personality filled with light and joy. Sometimes, said George, too much joy; when Sam reached the full riotousness of adolescence, he’d remodeled the second floor of the house and banished her, her dogs, her telephone, her rock and roll, and her wild band of giggling girlfriends upstairs.

George had taken her everywhere with him, including to Europe twice before she was fifteen. He wanted her horizons to have no limits. When it was time for college, she’d sent off for all the catalogs, and she and George had visited schools on both coasts. Then,
having taken a good look, she’d decided, much to George’s delight, to stay home. Atlanta’s Emory University had been good enough for her uncle; it was good enough for her. She made dean’s list her freshman year—and then that following summer, she met Beau. Only six months later, she’d fled to California and Stanford, taking George’s heart with her. That had been almost twenty years ago.

“Horace has brought you a small pot of coffee. Shall I serve you some?” George asked.

At her nod, he poured her a cup of Horace’s bracing brew and himself a tot of cognac. All his moves were careful, practiced. He’d been taking lessons from the Lighthouse for the Blind in “the avoidance of making a total ass of oneself,” as he called it.

He was philosophical about his predicament: if he had to go blind, he said, at least the cause was something more exotic than simple old age. He had contracted river blindness while tromping around the Amazonian wilderness of Brazil. Yet he wouldn’t have given up a moment of his world-trekking, even if the eventual price could have been predicted.

“I received an interesting telephone call today,” he said after toasting her health. “From Liza Ridley, the daughter of Forrest Ridley.”

“One of your old partners.”

“Yes, I thought you might remember him.”

“Not very clearly. But I remember your talking about his work,” Sam said.

“Always solid and sometimes brilliant. Anyway, I’ve known young Liza since she was a twinkle in Forrest’s eye, and I’m very fond of her. Bright girl. Different. Gives her mother fits, I’m sure.”

“Sounds like a young lady after my own heart.”

“I suspected you’d think so. That’s why I thought I’d ask you to do me this favor.”

Sam cocked a finger at him. “Pow!” she said. She should have known George was up to something.

He smiled and continued, “Liza said she didn’t know who else to talk to about this. She thinks her father is missing or in some kind of trouble. Seems he calls her every Saturday morning over at Agnes Scott College, where she’s a senior, and they make their bets with one another on the weekend ball games. This is the second Saturday in a row he’s missed.”

“Why doesn’t she just call him at home?” Sam suggested.

“He’s not
at
home. She said her mother, Queen—I don’t know if you ever met her—Queen told her he’s away on business.”

“Queen?”

“Queen.”

“Of the Bitsie, Bootsie, Muffy, Muggsie school?” Even though she’d grown up with them, Sam had always found these WASP nicknames ridiculous.

“The same genre.”

“So why doesn’t
Queen
’s word take care of it?”

“Ridley’s never failed to call her before, even when he was out of the country. It seems this betting business is something they’ve done together since Liza was a little girl.”

“Only child?”

“Yes. And the apple of Forrest’s eye. Even though Liza, as I said, is a most unexpected product of the Ridley environment, a bit of a bohemian. He dotes on her.”

“Why doesn’t she get her father’s number from her mother and just call him?” Sam asked.

“Liza said Queen was rather vague about exactly where he is. San Francisco, she said, but wasn’t forthcoming with a phone number.”

“Sounds like a family matter to me, George. And more than a little silly. I know you’ve always loved doing these bits of skulking around when the Four Hundred wanted their dirty linen kept private, but this doesn’t seem worth your trouble. Forrest Ridley will probably call tomorrow, and it’ll all be over.”

“Maybe.” George was thoughtful. “Maybe not.”

Sam leaned forward and played with her coffee spoon, keeping her hands busy the way reformed smokers do when they’d rather be puffing on a cigarette. “Do you suspect something?”

“I don’t know. Ridley’s such a straight shooter, such a dependable man. I find this a bit odd.”

“Your antennae working overtime?”

“Maybe. In any case, I’ve arranged for you to visit with Queen Ridley tomorrow.”

“What? Me?” Sam sat up straight. “George! I don’t have time for this. Have you forgotten I have a job?”

“Were you going in to the office tomorrow?” A five-year-old child couldn’t have asked the question with less guile.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I
was.
I’m going to talk to Hoke about this sheriff business. And just because I work my own hours, George, does not mean that you should make appointments for me!”

“My dear, I’m very sorry.”

With that, George rubbed his eyes with a weary gesture. Then he looked up at her with a face so
contrite that she was suddenly embarrassed at her flare of temper. This was George, her beloved George. How could she deny him such a small favor?

“Oh, no,
I’m
sorry.” She reached over and patted his hand. “I didn’t mean to be so sharp. Of course I’ll do it for you.”

“Good.” He grinned, his expression just the tiniest bit triumphant.

And Samantha realized that she had been bamboozled by one of the wiliest of that most conniving, finagling breed of cat, the Southern lawyer.

“Damn you!”

“Ah, ah, ah.” He waggled a finger at her. “Too late. A promise is a promise.”

*

An hour later Sam sat in her bedroom before her dressing table mirror, toweling dry her dark curls. She leaned over and peered at her face, pulling with a forefinger at the corner of one eye. “Still holding, old girl,” she said aloud to her reflection. She chalked up her preservation to good genes, lots of sleep, eight glasses of water a day, and miles of fast walking.

The spacious yellow and white rectangular room, formerly the sun porch, was her favorite in this second-floor apartment—her old digs, which were still being refurbished. Peaches and Horace were above on the third floor, next to the attic studio George had let out for a long time to an artist friend. Sam liked the feeling of being in the middle, once again smack in the bosom of her family.

“I made the right decision in coming back, Harpo,” she said to the small white Shih Tzu who was lying belly-up on the carpet. He was giving her the look that meant she’d take him for a late-night walk if she were really a good person.

She picked him up and gave him a nuzzle. “In a little while. Hold on.”

Then she glanced from the small dog to the silver framed photograph of Sean O’Reilly that sat on her dressing table. It was Sean who had given her Harpo when the puppy was only a fluff-ball.

It had been the death of Sean, the chief of detectives in San Francisco and her lover, which had caused her to return to Atlanta. Yes, there’d been the fortuitous invitation at about the same time from the
Constitution,
too; the paper had made the deal very sweet. But she would have flown to the consoling arms of George even without the offer.

What irony—that she, who had almost killed herself with booze during her twenties but had been sober for almost ten years, should lose the man she loved to a drunk driver. The tragedy had felt like a replay of her parents’ deaths. Afraid she was going crazy, afraid of being tempted by the bottle, she’d known it was time to go home again. Nowhere else in the world offered such comfort.