Sleep No More (22 page)

“Why do you ask that?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Remember when I told you she’d shown me the darkest corners of her personality? That’s not completely true. I don’t think I ever saw the darkest corner. There was something buried so deep in there I could never get to it. And I don’t think she could either. What it was…I don’t know.”

“Sexual abuse, maybe?”

Waters thought about it. “Maybe. Once, during a really bad spell, she told me her father had sexually abused her.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Do you know what a ‘cutter’ is, Penn?”

“You’re not talking about a surgeon?”

“No. I’m talking about people who cut themselves in secret. Girls, mostly.”

Penn’s eyes went wide. “You mean self-mutilators?”

Waters nodded.

“Caitlin told me about them. It’s somehow related to bulimia and anorexia, isn’t it?”

“It can be. I know a lot about it now, but twenty years ago I knew nothing.”

“Mallory cut herself?”

“Yes. I didn’t know for a long time. Cutters cut places where they can see the blood but others can’t. But eventually I caught her. After that, she did it in front of me.”

“Is self-mutilation caused by sexual abuse?”

“It can be. The immediate pain of the cutting is used to distract the victim from chronic inner pain that she can’t escape. That could be sexual abuse. Mallory sometimes scratched and cut herself during sex. Sometimes she wanted me to do it.”

Penn shook his head. “So, did you believe her when she told you she was sexually abused?”

“No. I’m not sure why. I just…didn’t feel in my gut that it was true. That could be male stupidity, of course.”

“If her real problem wasn’t sexual abuse, then what?”

“I think Mallory had undiagnosed clinical depression. And no one really knows what causes that. I had a class under Willie Morris at Ole Miss. He had William Styron speak to our class. I read
Lie Down in Darkness
for that, and I remember thinking Mallory was a bit like Peyton Loftis, when she went mad in New York. Peyton wound up killing herself, I think.”

Penn nodded. “She did.”

“Styron himself was later a victim of suicidal depression, though he managed not to kill himself. I think Mallory may have been bipolar. Manic depressive. Not like Styron or my wife, who both had major depressive disorder. Nowadays this stuff is no big deal. I mean, half the people we know are on Zoloft or Paxil. There are ninth-grade girls taking it out at St. Stephens, for Christ’s sake. But back in 1980, there was still a heavy stigma. And you knew the Candler family. You think they’d send their little princess to a shrink?”

“Not in a million years,” Penn agreed.

“I feel like I’ve told you nothing but bad things about Mallory.”

“I remember the good things,” Penn assured him. “What she did for the Children’s Hospital when she was Miss Mississippi. And the Protestant Home, and the Women’s Shelter. I remember when her father tried to use her crown to get himself reelected to the legislature. Mallory wouldn’t have any of it. Ben Candler damn near disowned her over that. I also know that her mother’s a first-class bitch hiding behind a smiley face she paints on for the world. It’s a miracle Mallory turned out as well as she did.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Penn said, getting to his feet. “I’m tired of being under a roof.”

Waters stood too. His muscles felt tight, his joints creaky, and he was glad to follow Penn through the door to the backyard. Washington Street was one of Natchez’s most beautiful thoroughfares, and Penn’s yard was a showplace. There were dogwood and crape myrtle trees, azaleas, rafts of ivy, and perfect circles of monkey grass around the trees. Oddly, there was no division of any kind between Penn’s backyard and the one next door. Together they formed a huge garden with several play areas, and it seemed as though Penn and his neighbor had collaborated to make a fantasyland for children.

“Who lives over there?” Waters asked, pointing at the three-story town house next door.

“That’s Caitlin’s house. I had to live somewhere, so I picked the most convenient place.”

Waters started to smile but didn’t. Caitlin Masters was not only Penn’s girlfriend, but also the publisher of the local newspaper.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Penn said. “Don’t worry. Caitlin and I won’t be exchanging information. Not from me to her, at any rate. We had to deal with this situation on the Del Payton case. It wasn’t a problem.”

“You didn’t have to say that. But thanks.”

Penn walked over to a flower bed, knelt, and started pulling up weeds.

“So,” Waters said, “are you going to tell me about this theory you mentioned?”

Penn continued to pull weeds. “Do you know why I asked for all the details about you and Mallory?”

“No.”

“I wanted to know why you were so susceptible to the things Eve told you.”

“And now you know?”

“Yes. I have a lot of thoughts about you and Mallory, actually, but we’ll save those for another time. The bottom line is that Eve didn’t have to try very hard to resurrect Mallory Candler for you, because for you, Mallory never died.”

Waters didn’t know what to say.

“Oscar Wilde was firmly convinced that men are the more sentimental sex, and I think he was right. Don’t feel bad. It would probably be easy to do something like this to me, if Lynne Merrill had been murdered ten years ago.”

“Something like what?”

Penn looked up from his work like a doctor about to give a terminal diagnosis. “John, someone is trying to drive you crazy. Probably someone very close to you.”

“What?”

“They may even be trying to frame you for murder. I saw something like this in Houston once. A man married a woman for her money. Not surprisingly, he grew to hate her. He didn’t think he could murder her and get away with her money, so he tried to convince her family that she was insane. And it almost worked.”

“Who would want to drive me crazy?”

Penn shrugged. “That shouldn’t be hard to figure out. Who would benefit by your being declared incompetent?”

An image of Cole Smith came into Waters’s mind.

“I know that’s an unpleasant line of thought, but you’re in real danger. We have to go to the wall on this. We have to ask everything of everyone. Who’s in a position to blackmail you? Besides Eve Sumner, I mean, since she’s dead. Would anyone benefit if you were to go to prison for murder? And finally, does anyone hate you enough to destroy you simply for revenge?”

“Jesus.”

Penn went back to pulling his weeds. “I think we both know who we’re talking about. But let’s follow the logic before we name names. Who could possibly know all the facts that Eve used to convince you she was Mallory?”

“No one. I’ve been thinking about that for three weeks.”

“Could two people have pooled what they knew and put together the information Eve had?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about a diary?”

“What?”

“Did Mallory keep a diary? A journal? Something like that?”

“My God,” Waters thought aloud. “She did keep a diary. She had several, going way back. After the craziness started, I don’t remember seeing them as much. But she could have been writing a lot of that stuff down.”

“That may be our answer. You need to find out who has those diaries. I’d start with Mallory’s mother.”

“She won’t talk to me. Certainly not about that.”

“I might be able to help with that.” Penn yanked out a stubborn weed and tossed it on the ground. “Now, let’s get to the ugly stuff. I hear your partner’s in financial trouble.”

Waters nodded. “That’s what I hear too.”

“But not from Cole?”

“He hasn’t exactly been forthcoming.” Waters told Penn about the pumping unit Cole had apparently sold without permission.

“You’ve got real problems, John.” Penn looked up and smiled. “But they’re
worldly
problems, okay? Not supernatural ones. That ought to make you feel a little better.”

Waters felt light-headed. “It does, actually.”

“Let’s go back to Eve for a second. The way you told it to me, you were unconscious when she died.”

“As best I can remember.”

“It’s hard to imagine Cole slipping in and killing her to frame his best friend.”

“It is.”

“But he might not be above
paying
someone to kill Eve, and then framing you. We don’t know what problems he has. How much danger he’s in. I’ve seen things done between lifelong friends that you wouldn’t believe. There is literally no depth to which human beings cannot sink.”

Waters crouched beside Penn and spoke softly. “Cole offered to give me an alibi for the time of the murder.”

Penn’s head snapped toward him. “Did you ask him to do that?”

“Hell no.”

“Okay. You told me you didn’t use a condom with Eve that night, right?”

“No.”

Penn expelled a lungful of air, then stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “You screwed two people when you did that, John. Eve and yourself. Only you’re going to stay screwed. If they put you in that hotel room using DNA, it’ll take the archangel Gabriel to keep the D.A. from nailing you. They could say anything. Eve seduced you, then tried to blackmail you, and you killed her. Or you promised to leave your wife and then reneged. Eve threatened to tell, and you killed her. The scenarios are endless.”

Waters got to his feet. “You’re a real optimist, aren’t you?”

“I’m a lawyer. You have two choices. One: Turn yourself in to the authorities, which I don’t recommend at this juncture.”

Waters closed his eyes and sighed with relief.

“Two: Find out who’s trying to turn your life inside out, and nail them before they—or the police—nail you.”

Penn’s theory, combined with the prospect of action, gave Waters his first real hope since waking up next to Eve’s corpse. “How would you start?”

“Confront Cole about the pumping unit. Be aggressive. See how he reacts. I’ll do what I can to find out about Mallory’s diaries. We’ll talk again tonight.”

“What about Tom Jackson? Should I just avoid him? I have no idea what he’s going to ask me.”

“You went to school with Tom. What do you think about him?”

“The old cliché. Tough but fair. He’d hate to bust me for murder, but he’d do it.”

“Do you have your cell phone with you?”

Waters nodded.

“Call him right now. If he asks something you’re not sure how to answer, tell him you’re out in the county checking a well, and you’re getting a dropped signal. You’ll call him back when you get in.”

Penn’s deviousness brought a smile to Waters’s face. He took his phone from his pocket, called the police department, identified himself, and asked for Detective Jackson. After about a minute, Jackson came on the line, his voice deep and seemingly casual.

“Thanks for calling, John.”

“Glad to, Tom. What’s up?”

“I’m running down some leads on this Eve Sumner thing. She was a pretty complicated lady, I’m finding out. Anyway, I was down at her office, and they told me you stormed in there a couple of weeks ago and read her the riot act. What was that about?”

Waters was about to evade the question when Eve’s own lie came back to him. “She was trying to sell my house out from under me. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but she was kind of a pushy lady. She called me at the office and said she’d told some couple they could look through our house, when she knew it wasn’t for sale. That pissed me off.”

“I can see how it would,” Jackson said. “She pissed off a lot of people doing that kind of thing. Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“No. You guys got any suspects?”

A long silence. “We’re working it hard. That’s about all I can tell you.”

Waters felt himself sweating. “Well, good luck, Tom. Call me if I can do anything else for you.”

“I will. Thanks.”

As Waters hung up, Penn said, “You handled that smoothly. Maybe a little too smoothly.”

“Shit, what was I supposed to say?”

“I’m just kidding. Hey, remember you told me you felt like the senator in
The Godfather Part II
? He went to bed with a laughing girl and woke up with a dead whore?”

“Yeah.”

“The senator didn’t kill that girl. He was framed by the Corleones, who later gave him his alibi.”

Waters felt a chill as he thought again of Cole. “You’re right. I didn’t think it through that far.”

“It’s hard to think when you believe you just committed murder.”

Waters nodded.

Penn brushed off his hands. “It’s time to start thinking again,
paisan.
”

Driving south on Highway 61, Waters was nearly to the Saragossa Country Club when his cell phone rang. What would be a normal occurrence for most people sent a spasm of shock along his body. Eve might be dead, but the sound of his cell phone instantly resurrected her. He checked the LCD, half expecting it to read
PAY PHONE
, but instead he saw his wife’s cell phone number.

“Hey.”

“Where are you?” Lily asked.

“On my way to Saragossa for lunch. I’m going to meet Cole out there.” Actually Cole had no idea he was coming. “How’s your day?”

“Fine. Ana’s staying over at Lindsey’s tonight.”

Lindsey was a classmate who lived in one of the white-flight neighborhoods that had sprung up around the country club. “On a school night?”

“Tomorrow’s Lindsey’s birthday, so I said it was all right.”

“Okay.”

“Besides, that gives us some more time together.”

Waters had thought last night’s lovemaking an anomaly, despite Lily’s professed commitment to change. “That’s true,” he said neutrally.

“Have you checked your voice mail?”

“No.”

“You should. I haven’t left a message like that in a while. I’ll see you later on. Or call me, if you like the mail.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I love you.”

“You too,” he said, nonplussed by her forwardness.

He clicked off and punched in the code for his voice mail.

“It’s just me,” said Lily. “I’m not calling to ask you to pick up something at the store or bug you about some household junk. I’m calling to tell you I wish you were inside me right now.”

Waters swallowed. Lily had not done anything like this for
years.

“I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. What we did last night. And I’m touching myself. I wish you could do this for me.
Mmm.
If you were, you’d know I’m telling the truth. Well…I hope you get home soon.”

He hung up and made the turn into Saragossa. As the clubhouse came into sight, he decided not to call Lily back. He was glad she was making an effort to close the distance that had separated them for so long, but he simply didn’t know how to respond.

He parked the Land Cruiser and walked through the front doors, then headed to the card room. Cole didn’t play golf anymore; he played gin or Bourée.

Waters found him sitting at a table with three men ranging in age from thirty to sixty. All four had stiff drinks in front of them. On any given day you could find the same crew here, talking, drinking, and gambling. If there was a game on TV, there would be money riding on that as well. Waters couldn’t imagine wasting his life this way, but he knew that men like Cole didn’t really have a choice. They followed their appetites, their appetites led them this way, and that was that.

“Rock!” Cole called. “You come out to play a few hands with us?”

“No. I need to talk to you for a minute. We’ve got some problems with a flow line in Jefferson County.”

“Flow line? What are you talking about?”

Waters jerked his head to the side, leaving no doubt that he wanted privacy. Cole stared at him for a few moments, then said, “Deal me out for a hand, guys. Duty calls.”

The other players grunted, and Cole got up and followed Waters through a side door that opened near the putting green. A retired surgeon was practicing there, so Waters walked out of earshot, Cole wheezing along behind him. They had taken walks like this many times, but always as brothers in arms, discussing strategy on deals they were putting together. Now events had divided them. Waters could feel it in his bones. Cole might not be his enemy, but a chasm had opened between them. When he stopped and turned by an iron bench, Cole squinted against the sunlight, then raised his right hand to protect his eyes.

“You wouldn’t drive out here over any damn flow line,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Didn’t you tell me it’s not a good idea to keep things from your partner?”

Cole’s neck tensed with the effort of remaining expressionless. “That’s right.”

“I hear we sold our three-twenty pumping unit off the Madam X well.”

Cole’s mouth opened slightly; then he drew back his head as if expressing shock at a gross misunderstanding. “Rock, we’ve talked a half dozen times about replacing that old three-twenty.”

“In a couple of years, maybe.”

Cole tilted his head to the side and pooched out his bottom lip. “Well, that’s a difference of opinion.”

“One I wasn’t aware of.”

“Look, am I in charge of that workover or not?”

“You were until today. But if you don’t give me some straight answers, you’re not going to be in charge of jack shit.”

His face reddening, Cole stepped forward like he meant to deck Waters. Instead, he looked at the ground and shook his head.

“Look, goddamn it. I just needed a few thousand to tide me over. I was going to replace the unit in a couple of weeks.”

This was a ludicrous statement, but it served as an admission of guilt. “Jesus, Cole, what about the fifty I lent you the other day?”

“I told you I needed seventy-five!”

“What the hell are you into? Is this gambling debt or what?”

Cole stared off over the eighteenth fairway. “Yeah.”

“Football? What?”

“Mostly football. Some high-stakes poker from the last trip Jenny and I took to Vegas. The vig on that is pretty tough. You know how it is. I tried to make back what I owed by going for broke.” Momentary excitement flashed in Cole’s eyes. “I had a sure thing, Rock. The Tulane–Ole Miss game. I had the inside poop from the team doctor. A guy in New Orleans clues me in—”

“But he was wrong, right?”

Cole shrugged. “I just didn’t catch the right spread.”

“Would you listen to yourself? You’ll never get out of the hole like that.”

“Shit, I know. I’m like a drunk with the gambling.”

“You’re like a drunk with the scotch too.”

Cole whipped up his arm. “Get off me, okay! You were screwing the local slut because she told you she was your dead girlfriend. That’s
necrophilia,
man.”

Waters felt his hands go cold. He wanted to scream back that he knew it was all a scam, that Cole and Eve were behind the whole thing, but he would not let his partner sidetrack him. He needed to get all the information he could. After today, the only communication he had with his partner might be through attorneys.

“What else have you done? Is this why you didn’t pay the liability premium? You used that money to pay debts?”

“No.”

“Am I going to have to audit every goddamn line of our books? Tell me the truth.”

Cole distended his cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and expelled air in a repentant rush. “Okay…I was in a bind then too. Not as bad as now, but bad enough. I slid the premium money into a different account and cashed it out.”

Waters felt like the earth had opened beneath his feet. “Do you realize that I could lose everything because of that? My retirement? Ana’s college money?”

“Uh-huh,” Cole said in a dead voice. “I’ve agonized over it ever since they found the leak. But goddamn it, John, you put all that at risk yourself when you started screwing Eve. What’s going to happen to them if you go down for murder?”

“Why would I go down for her murder?”

Cole’s eyes glinted. “You can’t fool your partner, Rock. I know you were with her that night.”

“You’re full of shit. What do you think you know?”

Something like satisfaction crossed Cole’s face. “I know what I know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“No? Maybe I got curious about why you’d given up your true-blue work ethic after seventeen years. Maybe I followed you for a couple of days. Maybe I saw you go into the Eola to meet Evie. You should have taken me up on that alibi offer.”

“You couldn’t have seen me go into the Eola that night, because I wasn’t there.”

“Whatever you say, Rock. Just don’t push me, okay? Don’t even dream about going to the cops over this pumping unit thing.”

Waters shook his head in disbelief. “Is that what you think I’d do? Turn you in to the police? I’m trying to
help
you, man.”

Cole looked uncertain.

“You know what this tells me? You wouldn’t hesitate to turn
me
in for something. Is that what you’re doing? Threatening to turn me in if I don’t pay off your debts?”

“Have I done that?” Cole snapped. “Have you heard me say that?”

“It sure sounded like you were leading up to it.”

“Goddamn it, Rock, everything’s just gotten fucked up. And I can’t see how to unfuck it.”

“This is a sad day, partner. We’ve known each other almost forty years. And this is how it ends up?”

Cole suddenly looked close to tears. “You don’t understand, John. This isn’t just about money. I don’t pay these guys? They take it out of my hide. And maybe they don’t stop there, you know? There’s no way Jenny can make it if something happens to me. I gotta find a way to pay this off.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. I been doing stuff like selling that pumping unit just to keep up the interest on the debt. I mean, what the hell? If the EPA thing goes against us, we’re going to lose it all anyway.”

This was true enough. And given his present difficulties, Waters could care less about the dollar value of a pumping unit. “Listen to me,” he said. “Think about when we were kids together. Those summers by St. Catherine’s Creek. The forts we built…the stuff we did together. You at my father’s funeral.”

Cole nodded. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not for me. For me it was yesterday. Now I want you to tell me something. Were you in with Eve on this thing from the start?”

“What thing?”

“Don’t
lie,
Cole. This is me. Did you feed Eve a bunch of stuff about Mallory and me so she could make me think I was going crazy?”

Cole did a first-rate impression of being shocked. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“You could sell a lot more pumping units with me out of the picture. Maybe even some production, if you forged my signature. And if you did it before the EPA lands on us with both feet, it might just buy your ass out of the hole.”

Cole’s mouth was hanging open. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m stone sober. I’m as sane as I’ve ever been, and I’m not going anywhere. You got it? I’ll be running this company till the EPA chains the door shut. And as of now, you’re making no solo decisions regarding cash flow, production, or anything else.”

“If you’re not drunk, you
have
gone crazy. You think I’d fuck my best friend like that?”

The hurt in his voice almost made Waters turn away, but this was no time to be soft. “I don’t know what to think anymore, partner. We’ve come to a pretty bad place.”

Cole shook his head, stepped forward, and put his beefy hands on Waters’s shoulders. “Rock,” he said in a cracked voice. “I’m under some real pressure, no lie. All told, I’m over six hundred grand in the hole. But I’d go down with my legs broken and a bullet in my head before I’d do something to hurt you or your family. That’s God’s truth.”

Despite his shock and fury, Waters felt tears sting his eyes. There was no doubt that Cole at least believed what he said. He started to press on with his accusations, as Penn would have wanted him to do, but he simply didn’t have it in him. He squeezed Cole’s arm and said, “I know you would, partner. I know.” Then he gave Cole a hug. He felt the big man shaking, and he knew then that Cole really was in the kind of trouble that some people never walked away from.

“Don’t sweat the little shit,” he said.

“And it’s all little shit,” Cole replied automatically.

They forced a laugh, and then Waters took out his keys.

“What are you going to do?” Cole asked.

“I don’t know. You just stay safe, okay? And don’t worry about that three-twenty.”

Cole took a step toward him. “Listen, John. I don’t know what you did exactly. But my offer for an alibi still stands. If you can’t figure a way out, come see me. We’ve dug ourselves out of holes before. Maybe we can do it again, if we stick together.”

Waters tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. Cole sounded so sincere, yet every word of it could be a lie.

The office was busy that afternoon. Monthly billing was going out to the coowners in all the wells, and Sybil couldn’t handle it alone. Since Cole was busy drinking and playing cards, that left Waters to fill in for him.

The printer jammed halfway through the job, and as he helped Sybil clear it, he felt tempted to ask her some questions. If she was sleeping with Cole, as he suspected, she might know a lot about his financial problems. She might also know if he’d had any recent contact with Eve. But Sybil seemed to be in a down mood, and he didn’t want her to think the company was in more trouble than she knew about already.

At a quarter to five, Sybil headed out to the post office to mail the bills. Cole still hadn’t returned, so Waters locked the office and headed home. He was nearly there when his cell phone rang, and he saw a mobile number he didn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“This is your fellow Eagle Scout,” said a male voice.

Waters almost laughed at Penn Cage’s choice of code. “What’s going on?”

“We’re both on mobile phones. Where are you?”

“State Street, on my way home.”

“We need to talk. Your house?”

“Ah…I’d rather meet elsewhere.”

“Okay. How about the parking lot of Heard’s Music Company?”

The lot was only a few hundred yards from Waters’s driveway. “I’ll see you there.”

Waters hung up and sped past his driveway, then crossed one boulevard and turned into the music store parking lot. Waters had bought his last piano here, a nine-foot concert grand. As a boy, he and his mother could only dream of an instrument like that; now he owned a house that seemed incomplete without one.
But for how long?
he thought.

As he parked the Land Cruiser, Penn leaned out of a green Audi TT and motioned for him to get in. When Waters climbed into the convertible, Penn shook his hand and smiled.

“What’s up?” Waters asked. “Do you know something?”