“One of my retailers down in Columbus finally got fed up with a customer like that. She’s been doing this to him for years and he’s had to smile and pretend he doesn’t know what she’s up to, hoping that eventually she’d realize how much service she’s been getting from him even though she’s never bought much beyond a couple of lamps and some throw rugs.
“But this time, when the expensive couch arrives from the wholesaler, Ms. Bargain Hunter is horrified. She calls one-eight-hundred, finally gets transferred to a human voice and shrieks, ‘I wanted pink rosebuds on my couch, not orange and purple plaid.’
“ ’I’m sorry, madam,’ says the wholesaler, ‘but you ordered fabric number 4879-J and that’s what we sent you.’
“So she calls to scream at my retailer, who says, ‘Did you think I said 4879-J? Oh, no, no, no, ma’am, I said 4879-A. 4879-A’s the rosebuds. Orange and purple plaid doesn’t suit your decor? Sorry, ma’am. If you’d bought it from us, we could make it right, but since you didn’t, I’m afraid we can’t help you.’
“ ‘Sorry, madam,’ says the wholesaler’s customer service manager. ‘But we sent what you ordered, so it’s your fifteen-hundred-dollar problem.’ ”
“The customer is not always right,” Pell told me as he unlocked the van.
“Damn straight,” said Dixie. “ ’Specially if she’s not a paying customer.”
“Why does Savannah think that Drew’s her daughter?” I asked as the porch swing moved gently back and forth like a small boat caught in the shallows.
Dixie shook her head. “I don’t know. You, Pell?”
Hie sun was sliding down the western sky and I was again on Pell’s screened side porch, a glass of wine in my hand. Dixie was in one of the wicker chairs, her long legs tucked under her as she waited for the Ragsdales to bring Lynnette back. Pell was in the kitchen putting together a coq au vin for their supper later, but he had opened the sliding glass window over the sink so that he could hear and be heard.
“It’s only when she’s off her medications,” he said. His voice was muffled as he turned away to slide the casserole into his oven.
“Heather McKenzie said that, too,” I said, “but why?”
We had told Dixie about Heather’s trip to Georgia back in the winter, so she was up to speed.
“Crazy people have crazy ideas. That’s how you know they’re crazy,” she said.
“No, I mean why Drew? Why not Evelyn or some other child?”
“I don’t know,” Dixie repeated. “We weren’t here when it started and Evelyn was older by the time we moved.”
But I was remembering something. “You said she had affairs with some of the biggest names in High Point. And Jay Patterson was one of them, right?”
“That’s only gossip. I wasn’t here then.”
Pell had finished in the kitchen and as he joined us, I said, “You were here in High Point then, weren’t you?”
“High Point, low point, what’s the point?” Pell asked lightly as he poured himself a glass of wine. “There is no point.”
“Yes, there is!” I said sharply. “The point is that Chan’s dead and she may have killed him with my penicillin. Even if it makes no sense to us, there has to be a reason that makes sense to Savannah.”
“Maybe.” He turned his wine glass in his hands and stared into the golden liquid, then sighed. “Okay. Yes, she did have an affair with Jay Patterson. Two affairs, actually. The first one ended when Elizabeth announced that she was pregnant—with Drew, as it turned out—and that was the first time Savannah took off. I guess it hurt too much to stay around and watch him make like a doting king awaiting the birth of the heir apparent. They said she was gone four months. She’d been back about six months when I started working at Mulholland and it was still fresh enough for me to hear all the gossip. For a while, it was all very civilized. She and Patterson acted more like old drinking buddies than past lovers.
“And she certainly wasn’t celibate. Back then she could drink like a sailor and swear like a lumberjack—or is it the other way round? What Heather told us about Savannah’s mother? I didn’t know it, but I’m not surprised. Savannah was always there with gracious thank-you notes, bread-and-butter letters, flowers at the appropriate moment. Underneath all the brittle cynicism, she was Old South proper. But she was always taking on various freelance projects for Fitch and Patterson and I remember her bugging him once because the pictures of Drew that he carried in his wallet weren’t up to date.”
He took a small sip of wine. ‘The first time I noticed anything odd though was when Patterson brought Drew out to the studio one day when she was about three. Savannah had someone bring up an armload of dolls from the prop shelves for Drew to play with, and after she and Patterson finished discussing business, she got down on the floor and played tea party. This was not a woman who normally went gooey-eyed over children, but she even got Patterson to sit down on the floor and sip imaginary tea, too. You know the way some men are about their daughters? Especially Southern men?”
I nodded. My own daddy has a little of it in him although he never played tea party with me. (And not just because I was too busy running after my older brothers to sit still with a tea set.)
“I think Savannah fell in love with Drew that day.”
“And Jay Patterson fell for her again?”
Pell shrugged. “That I can’t say, but they did become lovers again for a while. That picture you said Heather McKenzie had? It was taken around that time.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know that anything dramatic actually happened. I’ve often thought they just realized that their moment had passed. Things were intense for a few weeks, then it was as if the sexual part simply burned itself out. They stayed friends and she always had a soft spot for Drew.”
