The Sassy Belles (8 page)

“Mornin’, Blake,” he said, all businesslike to break up the
awkwardness of the moment.

Harry had pulled in right behind me and was just getting out of
his Mercedes. I heard his door slam. Vivi and I were inside when Harry arrived
at the door, Sonny shaking hands with him quickly and patting his back as though
they were golf buddies.

“Y’all have a seat,” Sonny began, just as Bonita entered the
room with her hands full of a delicious-smelling little box.

“Hey, y’all. Sorry to interrupt—” she began, but Vivi cut her
off.

“What in the world is that scrumptious smell? My stomach just
rumbled so loud you could hear it across town. All this mess with Lewis has me
so worked up, I don’t think I’ve remembered to eat much.”

“Well, here, honey, have a rib! They’re from Arthur’s new
place. I told him I would pass samples around the neighborhood for him. We want
the whole town talkin’ ’bout these so everybody is excited when we—uh, when
he
has the grand opening. They are so good…” she
said, opening the container and passing them around.

“You and Arthur seem to be spendin’ a lotta time together since
y’all met at church last month,” Vivi said, taking a rib from the box.

“Yeah, he is a sight and, man, can he cook up some sweet, saucy
ribs. He is just so talented in the kitchen.”

“Uh-huh, and maybe elsewhere….” Count on Vivi to say the thing
we were all thinking. She just couldn’t keep even a single thought to
herself.

“Now, Vivi, you know me and you know I don’t fool around, but I
do love spendin’ time with Arthur. He is quite the gentleman…and quite the chef.
Blake, have a rib, honey…it’ll just melt in your mouth.” I took one, looking at
Sonny with my eyebrows up. Was Bonita investigating cases, ribs or Arthur these
days?

“Well, I better get goin’ before I don’t have any ribs to pass
out. See y’all later,” Bonita said with a smile as she covered the ribs and
turned toward the door. “I got me a list of places to visit with these little
delicacies. I just know the courthouse would love a rib or two. And, Sonny, I’m
on my lunch break so don’t be thinkin’ I’m shirkin’ my work. You know nothing’s
more important to me than this department.” And with a swish of her curvy hips,
she stepped outside and shut the old wooden door with a bang.

“Yeah, nothing except Arthur and his new BBQ business. I do
believe he may have himself a new business partner ’fore this is over with,”
Vivi said.

We all chewed our saucy ribs and Sonny grabbed some napkins
from his desk drawer. Vivi began to tap her fingers on the table anxiously. You
could just tell she’d reached her limit for waiting, and she was quickly running
out of patience.

“Can I get anyone a drink?” Sonny offered as he handed out the
napkins.

“No!” Vivi said, full of exasperation. “For God’s sake! Let’s
just get this over with. I swear, if I smoked, I’d be settin’ new records.
Besides, I drank enough coffee at Mother’s to be wound up tighter than a Bessie
bug for a month of Sundays! So, please, just show me the damn clothes!”

“We’re fixin’ to get right to it.” Sonny motioned to Deputy
Officer Dooley with a raised eyebrow and a quick flick of his head to retrieve
the evidence. The little officer made his way down the wood-planked floor to a
small room at the end of the hallway. We wiped our mouths as Officer Dooley
returned with a large plastic Ziploc bag. Sonny passed around a little garbage
can and we all dropped the rib bones inside. Vivi sat up in the wooden
barrel-backed chair and scooted to the edge of her seat. She removed her
oversize round black sunglasses that she used more to hide her worried eyes than
shield any sun on this gray morning.

Sonny stood and pulled on latex gloves from behind the desk and
slowly removed each garment from the bag, holding them between his thumb and
index finger. The clothes were so muddy, I could barely make out any color or
texture. Vivi stood and moved forward one step toward the desk. Her hand was
outstretched toward the wet bag but Sonny yanked it back.

“No, Miss Vivi. You cannot touch this. It’s classified evidence
now. Do you recognize anything?” He continued to lay the garments out across the
plastic sheeting that covered the desk. He pulled out the trademark khaki polo
pants, torn and muddy. And then the sherbet-orange polo shirt. It was almost
unrecognizable, the color so destroyed by the rush of the river and all the mud.
But Vivi started to shake.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” she muttered.

Harry and I stood up slowly. I put my arm on Vivi’s shoulder
and glanced at Harry in the sudden sharp silence. For a split second, only the
whir and beat of those old overhead fans filled the air. Thump. Thump.
Thump.

“Miss Vivi,” Sonny broke in, “do you care to, uh,
elaborate?”

Vivi only continued to mutter, her hands trembling. She was
shaking her head back and forth as if in disbelief.

“Okay, Vivi,” I said. “‘Oh, shit’ is not an identification or
an elaboration. You’ve got to give us something else.”

I glanced back over her shoulders at Harry. He looked chalky
white. “Harry,” I whispered, “are you okay?”

He knew he couldn’t identify the clothes, but he obviously
recognized Lewis’s style in that wet muddy bag. He squinted, swallowed hard and
brushed his hand across his brow. I knew he was not okay. He swallowed hard
again, as if trying to suppress the words he had shoved deep down along with his
emotions. Several years of wanting to speak to Lewis seemed to regurgitate in
his throat. Several years of wishing things hadn’t happened like they did. I
felt for him in that moment there in the little office. But Harry had never
handled Lewis very well. Watching him now took me back to that awful night six
years ago when they’d last spoken.

I will never forget the way it all unraveled. Nearly seven
years ago Harry’s dad died suddenly. He was sixty-two years old and had a stroke
in his sleep. He had just quit the law practice his own father had started. He
lasted barely six months into retirement when Julia, Harry’s mother, found him
cold in the bed one Friday morning over the Fourth of July weekend. She called
Harry first and he gathered the rest of the family.

After the funeral Harry was named executor, as his mother had
to go on medication. She became much too fragile to handle the estate. Most of
it certainly was going to Harry in any case.

Shortly after, Lewis and Harry got together to discuss what to
do with their widowed mother and that’s when the trouble began. Harry wanted to
make sure Julia stayed in her own house. He wanted to take the money they’d
inherited, and there was a lot of it, and hire ’round-the-clock care for Julia—a
cook, a housekeeper, a driver—all so that Julia could stay in the house she had
called home for over forty years.

Lewis, however, did not want to donate his share of the
inheritance for that purpose. Instead, he wanted to invest it, turn it around
quickly to make millions and then take Julia to live with him, to finally be the
son he had never quite been able to be. He told Harry his investment was a sure
thing. It would make them even richer.

This was typical Lewis. His heart was huge, and it was almost
always in the right place. He just didn’t have Harry’s knack for thinking things
through. Harry was the tortoise and Lewis was the hare, running fast and
furious, throwing caution to the wind, wanting to fill up every second of life
with
life. His epitaph would probably read: “I
never wasted a minute. I never took the safe path. I risked it all and loved
every second.”

Harry was quite the opposite. Slow and steady. He knew what he
wanted and he only took the sure bet, the low risk path, trodden by many a Heart
man before him.

Clearly, he and Lewis clashed. Harry needed Lewis’s part of the
estate to care for Julia in the way he intended, in the grandest style and
opulence. But Lewis refused. They argued for weeks. Then one day, Lewis burst
into our house and announced he had done it. Some college buddies of his in
Birmingham had a sure thing going. Lewis invested in their new business as a
partner. He was so excited. “Full turnaround with massive interest,” he had
said, “is guaranteed in six months.”

Harry and Lewis did more than argue this time. You could’ve
heard their shouting two blocks away.

“I’m sick of you always making all the decisions for this
family,” Lewis had hollered. “Dad only ever believed in you because you’re just
like him. Always walking the straight and narrow, even when it means losing out
on the chance of a lifetime! He always thought I was a joke ’cause I wouldn’t
even consider law school.” Lewis paused and shook his head in disgust. “The
predictability of it all makes me sick. Another Heart goes to law school. Oh,
that’s original. I’d rather die than be another Heart in law school.”

“Oh, and what have you gone and done instead? Talk on the
radio? Selfish, as usual. You know, I have had just about enough of your shit.
I’ll take care of Mother my way till the money runs out. And you can go straight
to hell.”

“
I’ll
be caring for Mother,” Lewis
shouted, “and won’t that be just a shock to everyone. You’ll see, Harry. In six
months. I guarantee you!” And with that, Lewis slammed the door to the house on
his way out.

“God, he is absolutely ridiculous,” I remember Harry saying
after he left. It was true, what Lewis had said, though. Harry always thought of
Lewis as a joke.

Six months passed and Julia was getting better every week.
Harry cared for her with an entourage of help and kept her in her Southern
mansion on the southeastern edge of town. We didn’t hear from Lewis at all for
the entire six months.

Then, late one soggy November afternoon, Lewis showed up at our
door. Soaking wet and reeking of alcohol, he looked as though he hadn’t showered
in a week.

“Lewis! My God, get in here!” Harry said, pulling his brother
inside from the storm.

“Lewis, what happened?” I asked.

“It’s gone.” He was dripping rainwater all over the wood floor
and trying hard to hold himself together. He looked so lost and helpless, it
broke my heart. Harry, however, had no pity. He was full of rage.

“How much did you lose?” he asked, his voice as cold as
ice.

“All of it.”

“Oh, dear God.” Harry sank down on the couch. “I knew it,” he
muttered. “What happened?”

Lewis explained this new mess he was in. Harry and I had been
married about four years at the time, and this was at least the sixth time that
I’d seen Lewis in trouble.

“The investment didn’t work.”

Harry and I looked at each other as if to say, “Duh.”

“We got that part,” I said. “What happened?”

“I’m in trouble.” He kept his head down.

“What now?” Harry said.

“This time it’s really bad.”

“Lewis, what the hell happened?” Harry pushed.

“The company was illegal.”

“What?” Harry stepped closer to him. “What company? What do you
mean illegal?”

“It was all fake, Harry, a money-laundering scheme.”

“How much of it is gone?” Harry asked.

“All five million. All of mine plus some of Mother’s.”

Something seemed to break for Harry at that moment. His
practiced stoicism, his perfectly calm and always unruffled demeanor suddenly
cracked. He grabbed Lewis by the front of his shirt. “Tell me everything, you
sorry bastard! Now!”

“I invested part of Mother’s money and all of mine into a new
radio franchise. A new national network.” Lewis was shaking, his usually clear
voice nearly inaudible.

“We sold all of this advertising. They were out of Baltimore.
All of the money was coming out of Birmingham. They told us we were on the
satellite and soon every station in the country doing talk would be carrying us
so we sold the advertising.”

“You sold advertising on a phony network?” Harry broke in.

“Now the Baltimore group has shut down and disappeared. No
station, no advertising, no money.”

“That’s an FCC violation, you idiot!”

“I know, Harry, but eventually the network was going to carry
the advertising. We were sold a bill of goods. But now there’s no network and
all five of us from the Birmingham group will go to jail. Harry, you’ve got to
get us off.”

“You knew you were selling ads on something that didn’t exist
yet,” Harry shouted, infuriated. He was in shock. We all were. Lewis had outdone
himself. This was by far his biggest mess.

“Yes, but we’d have millions as soon as we turned on the
satellite. It would be instant. Tuscaloosa would be carrying the new network,
too,” Lewis continued, his voice high and shaky—clearly he was living a
nightmare.

“Would be, should be—but none of it worked! Why the hell did
you do it, Lewis?” Harry walked away throwing his arms up in the air.

Lewis stood up. His face went from fearful to pissed off in
less than two seconds. In a clear, low voice, Lewis quietly answered, “Because
of you, Harry. I wanted, for once, to be better. To be right. To show you I
could outdo you.”

“Well, look at yourself, Lewis. Happy? Mother’s life will never
be the same. Over five million dollars of Dad’s hard-earned money is gone
because of Lewis, the joke. Not only have you hurt Mother, you’ve stolen from
her and lied to both of us. You’ve dragged the family name down in the mud with
you. I hardly know what to say. I’ll defend you, Lewis, but only because you’re
my blood, and I wouldn’t dare disgrace my own family the way you would. After
that you’re on your own. I don’t even want to know you anymore.”

Lewis stood still, emotionally beaten to a pulp. He was
unsteady on his feet as he moved across the room toward the front door.

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m on my own as of now.” And with
that, he slammed the front door and walked out on Harry.

They hadn’t spoken since that fiasco nearly six years ago.
Lewis and his cronies hired some high-powered Birmingham lawyers who got them
off with some stiff fines and six months’ prison time at some posh, white-collar
camp outside Atlanta. Charged and convicted of investment fraud and some FCC
violations, Lewis eventually returned to Tuscaloosa stronger and even more
determined to make loads of money.