Then Hang All the Liars (9 page)

But this box wasn't locked. Its metal door hung ajar.

Felicity put a hand to it. It creaked, protesting as she pulled it wide open.

Then, “No, no, no, no!” she moaned, her cries disturbing the still-cool morning air.

For staring at her with big brown eyes was a life-size rag doll. A doll with red-brown curls, a blue-and-white-checked gingham dress, and a pair of scissors protruding from her heart. The stain around the steel was scarlet.

When Emily arrived home, Felicity was sitting in the front parlor with the rag doll on her lap, rocking.

“Oh, look,” she mourned, her tears so big they seemed violet as her eyes. She held up the ruined doll.

Emily took a deep breath. She had had years of practice in being calm. She took the doll.

“Oh, dear, she's been hurt.”

Felicity kept rocking, wearing that smug look on her face that Emily hated.

Drunks had that look.
I know something you don't know.
Emily didn't want to know. Keep it to yourself. But they never did. They fed you just enough to make you want to slap them.

“You said she'd be all right.” Felicity rocked on. “But she isn't, is she? She's dead. Someone killed her.”

“Who's the someone?”

“You wouldn't listen to me. Oh, no, Emily never listens to me. Emily's too smart.”

“Felicity, where did you get the doll?”

“For me to know and you to find out.” But then she changed her mind. “Where
you
left her.
You
did! I said she wouldn't be safe. But you knew better. Now look.
Now
are you happy?”

Felicity jumped out of the rocker and snatched the doll back. If Emily hadn't let go, she'd have torn it in half.

“You'd bury her somewhere and not tell me.”

Outside in the kennel, one of the dogs began to howl. A shiver ran up Emily's back. It was the sound of a mother's keening.

“You'd better go see about her,” Felicity said then, having shifted into perfect lucidity. “It sounds like Marilyn, doesn't it?”

It was Marilyn, the bitch who had whelped a few days earlier, nuzzling at a mouse-sized puppy who was soaked with her licking. Its brothers and sisters squirmed for position at her teats, but Marilyn ignored them. Emily picked up the limp newborn. No heartbeat. Not even the tiniest.

“Felicity, Felicity!” At the back door, Emily grabbed her keys and purse. “I'm going to Dr. Grossman's.”

Felicity nodded, rocking, rocking, still rocking the rag doll cuddled once more to her breast. “Go ahead. Go on. My baby will be all right. I'll make sure of it.”

She rocked and smiled and smiled and rocked. She smiled down into the doll's yarn eyes that were wide open.

Emily looked down at the puppy in her hand. Then, aping Felicity, she cuddled it to her breast. She wanted to warm it.

“Go,” Felicity repeated. “Go on. Mommy understands. That's what mommies do.”

Emily flew then.

Felicity kept rocking.

Seven

Oh, shit!
No mistaking the flashing blue light. Sam knew the speeding ticket already had her name on it.

If only she hadn't let Peaches convince her that she needed breakfast. If she'd packed last night for Fripp instead of this morning. If she hadn't stopped by the Little Five Points Pub to ask about the busty red-headed poet. If wishes were horses, she wouldn't be so late already.

Dammit!

Harpo, who was riding shotgun, gave her a look.

Okay, okay, so she was lying.

She always drove too fast. Blame it on Horace. He'd put her behind the wheel when she was fourteen and said
go like this.
Hunkered down, elbows loose, accelerator flat out.

Don't call us when you're dead
was how Peaches waved her off. The exact words she'd used for almost twenty-five years to the both of them.

“You could say
Godspeed
.”

“Leave God out of it. We'll do plenty of talking with him at your funeral.”

Sam wished Peaches, who could outjaw the devil if she chose, were here now to chat up this state trooper. She watched him striding toward her in the rearview mirror.

He was wearing those sunglasses. The Canadian Mounty hat, the crisp brown gabardine uniform tailored within a quarter-inch of his behind, the slow, purposeful walk.

She shivered. The last time a lawman had stopped her like this he'd almost killed her. Murdering son of a bitch was in prison now, but he'd made quite an impression. She rubbed her wrists where he'd snapped the handcuffs on.

“License, please, ma'am.”

Crap! She was still carrying California tags and a California driver's license. How many times had George warned her that she ought to get them changed? Well, it was too late now to say she was sorry.

He stared at her picture. She stared at him. He was about her age, and from what she could see around the shades, a cop from central casting. Cleft chin, strong jaw, curly brown hair, the works.

“Registration.”

She handed it over.

“Now, ma'am,” he said, leaning down and looking right at her, “you want to tell me about this fire?”

She shook her head.

“Well, is that little dog there dying? Are you taking him to the vet?”

“Afraid not.”

“Is someone in your family critically ill? Are you racing to get to a hospital?”

“No.”

“Well, then, you want to tell me why it is you're burning up the road?”

She'd been thinking of Peaches the whole time the man was talking. Horace may have gotten her into this, but her lessons at Peaches's knee would get her out.

“Well, officer,” she started, taking off her own shades so he could see her big brown eyes, “I'm trying to get home.” She paused and shifted her Southern accent, which came and went as the spirit moved her, into overdrive. “See, I've been living out in California a few years, and I haven't been home since I can't remember when, and I've been driving I don't know how many days since I left San Francisco, and now that I'm within a hundred miles or so of Savannah, well, it seems like I just can't wait anymore.” She was hot now, flying fast and loose. “I've been so lonesome for my momma and my daddy, and my brother Rick is going to be there too. I talked to Momma last night from a motel, and she said if I got home by dinner time today, she'd have dumplings waiting on the table.” She laid it on even thicker. “I know all that's not much of an excuse, but I'm sure you can understand, officer. Now you wouldn't want to ruin a Southern girl's trip back home, would you?”

There now. Scarlett O'Hara couldn't have done better.

His mouth was hanging open a little. Could they put her under the jail for lying? His ballpoint pen was still poised. He used it now to tip back his hat. She could see the line where the leather bit into his forehead.

“I'll give you credit, ma'am. It's the best one I've heard all morning.”

He stepped back to his car and pulled out the crackling speakerphone. Now she could hear him calling in her license plate. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. Four minutes passed. The radio popped again. Mickey Mouse on her wrist now said five. Was it good news or bad that it was taking so long? Seven minutes.

Then he was back. “Well, Miz Adams, it looks like you're not wanted for any felonies in California. And your driving record looks pretty clean. What story you use on the officers out there?”

“I tell 'em the truth, just like I told you.”

He laughed, but his eyes narrowed. “Listen, I'm gone let you and that little dog go this time. But I'm warning you. You got about a hundred and fifty miles between here and Savannah, and if I was you, I'd make sure I did it in no less than three hours. I reckon your momma's gonna keep them dumplings warm for you.”

“I sure do appreciate that.”

“Miz Adams?” He turned and threw the words back over his shoulder as he headed for his car again. “You tell such a purty story, you ever think of being a writer?”

*

So she was already late when she got to Savannah. Forget lunch at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House. She didn't have time to stand in line for sixteen vegetables, biscuits, fried chicken, cream gravy, and whatever Mrs. Wilkes had today for dessert. Pecan pie. Banana pudding. Coconut cream cake. Forget it. If she were going to get to Fripp by dark, she'd have to hustle her butt to find out what she could for Emily about Randolph Percy. Then, if she had a minute left, and if she felt like it,
maybe
she'd see about that damned bus-hijacking story. Pig story. Whatever.

The address she had for Percy's home was in the historic district of this sleepy old port city, not too far from Mrs. Wilkes. She made her way down broad avenues, past crumbling brick mansions, gentrified townhouses with lacy iron balustrades reminiscent of New Orleans. The two port cities smelled similar, too, a fecund odor of ripe vegetation, hot pavement, salt water. She wheeled slowly around a live oaklined square. This old part of town was full of squares, impediments to the free flow of traffic, but who cared? The same families had been sitting on the same porches sipping the same Madeira, fanning, chatting for centuries. No one was ever in a big hurry. Why, where would you want to go? Local thinking was, if you were in Savannah, you were already there.

It didn't take long to find the Percy house on West Gordon, looking like it had just climbed out of bed. Wisteria vines hung from loose gray brick. Flapping shutters needed paint. She shaded her eyes and stared up at the still house. Maybe nobody lived there.

Then a screen door banged, and a round-faced man with tortoise-shell glasses stepped out onto his porch at the house next door and blinked at her like a blue-eyed owl.

“You're staring at the wrong house if restoration's what you're looking for.” His voice was high and weedy and a little breathless. “Tourists usually are,” he raced on. “Now
this
,”
he said and pointed behind him, “is the result of two years of broken fingernails.
That
,”
he pointed back at the Percy house, “is a crying shame.”

“Your house?” She meant the one he had just walked out of.

His head bobbed.

“It's lovely. You do it yourself?”

“Every brick, every board, every curl of rotten paint. Had to burn it off.
Smell?
My Lord. Makes you shudder to think what must have been in it. Ground up bone meal.”

“Awfully pretty neighborhood. Reminds me of a little of San Francisco.”

His head bounced up and down again. “But this is all much older. When those boys were still living in mining camps, my house was already fifty years old. I've seen those houses,” he said, pushing back a blond wave.

“It's a shame these aren't all as pretty as yours.” Sam nodded at the Percy house next door.

His mouth pursed. “Nothing you can do about white trash.”

He couldn't mean the Percy family. They were gentry.

“Renters there now?”

“No. The owner's still there, but I've never seen hide nor hair of anyone in two years. Just stays inside and lets the place fall down around her ears. That's trashy, don't you think?” He unfurled the newspaper he'd picked up from his front porch and glanced at the front page, which seemed to galvanize him. “Listen, I've got to run. But here.” He reached in his jacket pocket and handed her a card. “That's my shop. If you want to see some
really
exquisite things, drop by. I could make you a good price.”

“I'll try to do that.”

The man started down the sidewalk, and then he hesitated and turned back, slightly pigeon-toed.

“How is San Francisco these days? Have you been there recently? I have lots of friends, but I've been afraid to call.” His voice trailed off.

She knew he meant the Castro, the gay neighborhood.

“Quieter,” she said.

“It's quieter here, too. Quieter everywhere.”

*

“They's something, ain't they?” called the old woman working in her yard on the Percys' other side. She was wearing a tatty straw hat with holes cut in it as if for a horse. Most of the elastic had given way in the top of her orange sundress, and the woman kept hitching at it.

“Who's something?” Sam moved over to the woman's yard.

“Them gays. Well, I tell you, I heard you over there talking with him. When I was a girl it was something folks just whispered about. It was a crime against nature is what it was. Now it's all out in the open. Well, hell, to each his own, I say.” Then the woman pulled a small box out of her pocket and shook something out of it onto the back of her hand. She pinched first one nostril, then the other, snorting.