“I’m afraid your friend must be mistaken. I don’t recall it.”
I gave it a two-beat pause.
“That’s strange, Buckie. Folks up there remember the incident. Which probably doesn’t bother you a lot because they’re poor. But I also hear the blue bloods of Mobile wouldn’t wipe their asses on a Kincannon. Enjoy your evening.”
I winked and walked to my truck without looking back, feeling Kincannon’s mute, blind hatred every step of the way.
It felt good.
Twenty minutes after leaving Dani I sat on Harry’s gallery. Harry sat in the glider sipping a beer. He’d traded work garb for a tie-dyed tee heavy on the red, lavender shorts, size-14 leather sandals. He’d moved the red-frame sunglasses to the crown of his head.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out a slip of paper.
“Guy’s name is Ted Margolin,” I explained, passing the slip to Harry. “He’s local, with the Mobile Register. But he handles state politics, and that means Montgomery. Good and fast and connected, according to what I could get from Dani.”
Sobbing as she wrote Margolin’s name and number. Apologizing again and again. Our yearlong relationship exploding around us and I’m lying to wrangle information.
“Connected to the cops?” Harry asked. “The administration side, people with access to records?”
“As much as any reporter could be, I guess. Dani says the guy’s almost sixty, worked the beat a long time.”
“Who’s opening the lines of communication?”
“Ms. D. said she’d call the guy tonight, pave the way.”
If she could pull herself together. If she hadn’t told Kincannon my request, him saying, screw the cop, let him get his own information. Or maybe she’d already forgotten about it, busy romping with the Buckster in a house stinking of flowers.
Harry said, “You tell her anything about what we’re-”
“Just the fake story, Harry. She wasn’t really listening. I got the feeling her life’s a bit complicated.”
“Complicated how, Carson? She’s keeping her toesies warm with…”
I raised my hand like a stop sign and said, “Enough.” Buck Kincannon was history.
For the moment.
I declined Harry’s offer of supper and started for home. The moments with Dani ached in my belly, a physical pain, like being punched. Then I remembered a kind and generous offer that had been made to me, and cut across town, heading west. It was nearing seven p.m., the shadows long, the air hazy and golden.
Before her divorce two years back, Clair Peltier and her husband had lived in a piece of high-money real estate on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. It seemed more museum than home, centuries-old furniture, art on marble pedestals, glittering chandeliers. A gilded harp, for crying out loud.
The lust for ownership had belonged to her husband, Zane Peltier. Clair preferred experiences to objects. Reading, cinema, the symphony, travel…all stirred her pot harder than a fancy car or an armoire by Louis the something or other. When divorce loomed, Clair found herself in the enviable position of having a husband with both money and a need to avoid news coverage. Today she lived in a small but elegant house on a woodsy acre in Spring Hill, the champagne section of town.
Driving down her street, I saw Clair in her front yard. She was painting her mailbox, brush in hand, a small paint can at her feet. The methodology was pure Clair: dip brush, remove excess, carefully paint one square inch of mailbox, repeat.
I pulled into her driveway, leaned out my window. “I didn’t know women in Spring Hill could paint anything but their nails.”
“Don’t give up your day job for Second City, Ryder.”
She finished another perfect square inch, set the brush on the can, walked to the truck. She wore jeans and white running shoes and a long-sleeved khaki shirt with tails nearly reaching her knees. A blue bandana held her hair back. After her divorce she’d gotten into yoga and health-type foods, getting lithe and limber and losing twenty pounds.
“What brings you to my driveway, Ryder? You lost?”
I slow-tapped my thumbs on the wheel. “Listen Clair, uh, you said that if I ever needed someone to talk to…”
“Let me put away the paint, clean my hands-”
“I didn’t mean now. But thank you.”
She put her hand on my forearm, concern in her eyes. “If something’s bothering you, Ryder, please, let’s talk.”
I said, “I know you’re busy with society things, pathology things, a heavy social schedule. Tell me what’s a good time for you.”
“I’ve done all my society things for this month, Ryder-a fund-raiser for the symphony. Pathology I do at work, not home. As for…what was the third option?”
“Your social life, like dates and whatnot.”
“I’ve got two guys hitting on me, Ryder. One’s a banker who waxes rhapsodic about money market funds, ugh.”
“The other?”
She made a purring sound deep in her throat. “A hottie, I think is the term. A charming and intelligent man, self-made multimillionaire, one home in Mobile, one in Provence, a pied-a-terre in Manhattan. We were out together last night.”
“Oh.”
“I’d be real interested if he wasn’t eighty-four years old. What are you up to Saturday, Ryder?”
“My new routine: nothing.”
“Want to come here? Or my office at work? I can close the door, we can talk as much as you want.”
“How about my place?” I suggested. “We’ll sit on the deck, watch the dolphin-tour boats go back and forth.”
She turned and walked back to the mailbox, her hips graceful beneath the denim. She dipped the brush in paint, poised it over the mailbox.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Ryder. How about sevenish? That work for you?”
CHAPTER 31
I pulled away from Clair’s and aimed my truck for Dauphin Island when my phone rang: Harry. I pulled to the side of the road.
“You at home, Cars?”
“Still in town, Harry. I was just talking to Clair.”
“You’re at the morgue?”
“I stopped by her house for a few moments.”
A two-beat pause. “After you took off I nuked some leftover Chinese. Then I sat down and pulled out a stack of Rudolnick’s cases to scan while I ate, plow through another half inch. There was a magazine mixed in with them, a psychiatry thing. Some pages fell out.”
“Pages from the magazine?”
“Pages tucked inside the magazine.”
“Those are subscription forms, Harry.”
“Whatever pills you’re taking, Cars, they’re working. These ain’t subscription forms. They’re notes in the doc’s handwriting. Comments on a case, I think, but this is the kind of thing you know more about.”
