Then Hang All the Liars (21 page)

The long shelves of the pantry had been filled with hundreds of jars of fruits and vegetables, glowing like rubies, emeralds, and yellow topaz. Now they were empty.

The long hours that the Edwards sisters had labored in their hot kitchen with their cook Louise had been a waste, for the jars lay smashed. Emily stood in a sticky stew of goo and broken glass. Not a single jar was left intact.

Nor, finally, was Emily's fortitude.

“Why?” She turned to Sam with tears pouring down her face. “Why here? Why me?”

Fifteen

Later after supper, Sam and George strolled arm in arm through their neighborhood.

“Unless we believe in ghosts, Randolph Percy did not smash all the jars in Emily and Felicity's pantry,” Sam said.

“That's for sure.”

“Maybe we can't attribute those other things to him either—the candy, the doll, the Mother's Day card.”

“Possibility.”

“Or maybe he did
some
of them.”

“Yes.”

“And somebody else the other.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“I don't know.” She led George around a clump of yellow chrysanthemums. “Maybe Emily and Percy.”

“In cahoots?”

“Emily could have led Percy on, then killed him.”

“Why?”

“Maybe Felicity was leaving all her money to charity, to a favorite cause, to the Players, I don't know.”

“Maybe Emily loved Percy,” George suggested.

“Now there's an idea. Maybe it had nothing to do with money.”

“Possible, but I'm having a hard time with it. Emily's one of my favorite people, you know. And didn't you say you thought she was seeing God O'Connor?”

“That's how it seemed from what he said—was that only this morning? Seems years ago.”

“Finding dead people does make the day seem longer.”

“
Humph
,” she said. “But you know”—she reached out to keep George from walking into a low-hanging branch—“there's still the fact that I believe Felicity about that damned baby.”

“You mean that it existed? You don't suspect Emily of killing an infant, too, do you? Forty, fifty years ago?”

“I don't know. When Felicity said it I believed it.”

“She does have that voice.”

“You're right. It could convince you of anything.”

They walked on. She stared up at the wide, bowed front windows of a white brick mansion, and just at that moment someone inside switched on a light. A couple sat in matching red leather armchairs across from one another. A blond woman held a small child on her knee. All three of them were laughing.

“Maybe Emily smashed all those jars,” she said.

“Why?”

“To divert attention from herself.”

“
Hmmm
. Or to destroy something.”

“Something hidden in one of the jars.”

“Yes.”

“But if she knew it was there, why not just remove it?”

“Beats me.”

“Me, too. I think I'll ask her.”

“Not a bad idea.”

Streetlights switched on then, casting a yellow glow on the oak-bowered street.

“I miss Mom and Dad most at this time of day,” she said.

George didn't bat an eye at her mental hopscotch.

“Especially Mom.”

“I know. Me, too.” Sam's mother had been his most beloved baby sister.

“Nicole Burkett reminds me of her a little.”

“Same hair.”

“Same manner. I remember Mommy always being so calm. So in control.”

“She was that. But she was a lot of fun too. An awfully jolly girl.”

“Didn't she have a great laugh, though?”

They were well past the big white house with the happy family now and were passing a vacant, overgrown lot.

“What was here?” Sam pointed.

George peered into the darkness, remembering more than seeing. “The old Webster house. Burned to the ground. A real tragedy.”

“Is there a story? Do I know it?”

“I don't think so. It was a long time ago.”

Sam urged him on.

“Jack Webster came home and found his wife in bed with a servant. A man who had lived in for years. So Jack locked them in the bedroom and burned the house down.”

“Jesus!”

“Then he drove up to their place on Lake Lanier and blew his brains out. Took all their dogs along. Killed them, too.”

“My God!”

“They razed the ruins. But the property has remained in the family. You probably know their son, Houston.”

“Sure.”

“He couldn't bear to build here or to sell the land, so it's stood. It's all overgrown, isn't it?”

“Like a little forest. As if nothing ever stood there.” Two beats. “Boy, Atlanta does have its share of tragedy.”

“Every place does.”

“Maybe it just seems more dramatic in the South.”

“Blood on the moon? Mayhem among the magnolias?”

“Something like that.”

“Perhaps you're right.”

“I think it's partly because everybody goes around being so polite all the time. Pretending everything's just hunky-dory.”

“You mean the crazy-child-locked-up-in-the-attic syndrome? The poor Petersons? Pretending little Peter wasn't there all those years?”

“You laugh. But you know it's true. You've had your share of your Petersons.”

“But you must remember, I haven't your perspective, dear. I haven't been away like you. Off.”

“Look at Felicity. Properly married to a banker for forty years, crazed by a terrible secret about a baby she had up in New York.”

“Well, you don't know that for sure.”

She gave him a look.

“It's not like young women haven't been having illegitimate babies since time immemorial, for Christ's sakes. But here it gets all blown out of proportion. Drives you nuts. Drove Felicity nuts,” she muttered.

“Her manic-depression had something to do with that.”

“Okay. Then let's look at Nicole Burkett.”

“Fine. What about her?”

“Well,
what
about her? Woman doesn't have any history from the time she was born until she married P.C. You want to tell me there's not some super-deep dark skulking around there?”

“She's not Southern. Doesn't fit the pattern.”

“Christ. Okay. She's married to one of the biggest, richest, most aristocratic good old boys who ever chugged bourbon, but you're right. She's not. But she's sure expected to
be
a Southern lady, isn't she? And there's something back there that she's hiding like crazy, that's not up to snuff. Something that probably contributed to her dear darling daughter's wanting to show off her sweet young body at Tight Squeeze.”

“You don't think you're pushing it a little?”

“I do not.”

“You think Southern women
in particular
live lives of quiet desperation? Is that what you're saying?”

“Something like that.”

She was warming to her subject now, walking ahead of George and turning back around to make her point.

“Let me put it to you this way. Have you ever listened to Southern women talk?”

“My dear, I've spent my whole life here, and I may be going blind, but I'm not deaf. My head is filled with the sound of their voices.”

“But do you ever really listen to them? Those high little-girl voices, so full of sweetness and light? Ending every sentence like a question because they don't even feel they have the right to make a declarative statement. Wouldn't say shit if they had a mouth full of it. Oh, sometimes they do, when they're alone, I mean with each other, just a couple of close friends or sisters, then you hear them get down and dirty. But the rest of the time in society, honey, they
know
their husbands are running around on them, they
know
their children are doing drugs, they just keep on pouring tea and baking cookies and smiling. Dressing in fresh, lacy underwear and smiling. Pretending their husbands aren't passed-out drunk on the sofa and smiling.”

“You'd rather they did something drastic, took lovers like poor Melba Webster?” He gestured back behind them to the ruin they'd passed. “End up burned to a crisp in bed?”

“Jesus Christ, I don't think that's the only possible ending to that scenario.”

“Or more like Mavis Tallbutton, loading up double-barreled shotguns and hijacking buses? Taking the law into their own hands?”

“She didn't shoot anybody.”

“I can't believe you said that.”

“Well, she didn't. And I bet she felt a hell of a lot better than if she'd sat home rocking on her front porch, pretending that she wasn't pissed as hell at her husband because he wouldn't do a damned thing. And at her sister-in-law and her daughter.”

“The daughter who did exactly what she wanted to do.”

“Right.”

“I think you've argued yourself into a corner.”

“I have not! Maureen did what she wanted to and Mavis did the same. And the devil take the hindmost.”

“That's not how the world runs. And those Tallbuttons aren't exactly society.”

“Then fuck society.”

“Whoa! You sound like your friend Julia Townley.”

“Yes, I do. And I sound like me.”

“Yes, you're right. You do indeed.” George chuckled. He did enjoy these conversations in which one or the other of them played the devil's advocate. “You sound a little like your mother, too.”

“George, my mother was the consummate Atlanta lady. And she certainly never said
fuck
in her entire life.”

“Not in front of her darling little girl, maybe. But she could curse like a sailor when provoked. Your father used to say he found it sexy.”

As she had, too—when Sean flew off the handle. Wasn't that funny? Was the quirk congenital?

“We argued ourselves around the block,” she said, looking up now at their old familiar house that she so loved.

“So we have indeed. Let's go sit on the side gallery and have a sip.”

“And I'll call Beau and see if he knows anything more on the late Mr. Percy.”

*

“Nothing untoward in the autopsy,” Beau said.

“So what was it?”

“Old age.”

“He wasn't
that
old.”

“What's the age at which people are allowed to die of natural causes. Dr. Adams? Seventy? Seventy-five? Eighty? I guess you just feel it in your bones that something's fishy.”

“You got it.”

“I keep telling you we need to X-ray those pretty bones or send them back to med school.”

“Very funny.”

“You'll be pleased to know I have someone checking to see if he complained of any symptoms in the last few days. But so far, we've found nothing in the lab. And, yes, we're cross-checking with the puppy's results.”

She laughed.

“Wasn't that your next question?”

“Sure.”

“See, I keep telling you we'd make a great team, Sammy. You've even got me thinking crooked like you do.”

“And it's improved your work, right?”

“I wouldn't go that far. But, anyway, we got zilch. And I still don't know what killed that puppy.”

“Really zilch?”

“So far. There are endless procedures, and there's no clue as to where to start. One doesn't perform a good autopsy in a vacuum, you know. And so far, we haven't been able to track down Percy's medical history. This could be something as simple as insulin coma leading to death, but in a person dead for several hours, insulin levels aren't reliable. And we'd place him dead at least forty-eight hours. So I wouldn't know about the diabetes, if it were that, for example, without his history.”

“Shoot! That reminds me. I meant to bring you some of his crazy tonic.”

“I'll be happy to take a look but—”

“
But!
Aren't you going to pursue this?”

“I can't. My most informed opinion really is natural causes. I can't spend the time and money, Sammy, without something more to go on.”