What I don’t doubt is that Jaime is relentless. If Lola Daggette has information that is important for some reason, Jaime will do everything she can to make sure the convicted killer doesn’t take it to the grave. I can think of no other explanation for Jaime’s visiting the GPFW, but what I can’t fathom is how I factor in and why.
An older man in a lab coat is busy counting pills in back, filling prescriptions, and I don’t see anyone else, and I wait. I open the Advil and take three gelcaps, washing them down with the iced tea as my impatience grows.
“Excuse me,” I announce myself.
The pharmacist barely glances at me and calls out to someone behind him, “Robbi, can you get the register?” When no one answers, he stops what he’s doing and comes to the counter.
“I sure am sorry. I didn’t realize I’m the only one here. Guess everybody’s out making deliveries, or maybe it’s break time again. Who knows?” He smiles at me as he takes my Visa card. “Will there be anything else?”
It has stopped raining when I return to the van, and I notice that the black Mercedes wagon is gone. The sun breaks through the clouds as I drive away, and the wet pavement is bright in the sunlight. Then the old city comes into view, low brick and stone buildings spreading out to the Savannah River, and in the distance, silhouetted against the churning sky, is the familiar cable-stayed Talmadge Memorial Bridge, which would take me into South Carolina, were that my destination. I imagine splendid haunts such as Hilton Head and Charleston, envisioning the oceanfront condo Benton used to have in Sea Pines, and the historic carriage house with its lush garden that once was mine.
So much of my past is rooted in the Deep South, and my mood is nostalgic and edgy as I reach the gray granite Customhouse and the gold-domed City Hall, then my hotel, a stolid Hyatt Regency on the river, where tugs and tour boats are moored. On the opposite shore is the posh Westin Resort, and farther down, cranes look like gigantic praying mantises perched above shipyards and warehouses, the water flat and the gray-green of old glass.
I climb out of the van and apologize to a valet who looks very Caribbean in his white jacket and black Bermuda shorts. I warn him about my cranky, undependable rental vehicle and feel obliged to let him know it wasn’t what I reserved and that it wanders all over the road and the brakes are bad, while I grab my overnight bag and other belongings. A hot breeze stirs live oaks, magnolias, and palms, and traffic bumping over brick pavers sounds like the rain, which has completely stopped, the sky patched with hints of blue as the sun sinks and shadows spread. This part of the world, where I’ve been so many times before, should be a welcome respite and a rich indulgence. Instead it feels unsafe. It feels like something to fear. I wish Benton were here. I wish I hadn’t come, that I had listened to him. I must find Jaime Berger without delay.
The lobby is typical of most Hyatts I’ve stayed in, an expansive atrium surrounded by rooms on six floors, and as I ride the glass elevator up, I replay the exchange I just had with the clerk at the front desk, a young woman who claimed my reservation had been canceled hours earlier. When I said that wasn’t possible, she replied that she had taken the call herself not long after she started her shift at noon. A man called and canceled. Whoever it was had my reservation number and the correct information and was very apologetic.
I asked the clerk if whoever did this was from my office in Cambridge, and she said she thought so. I asked if his name was Bryce Clark, and she wasn’t sure, and then I suggested it probably was my office calling to confirm, not to cancel, and there had been a misunderstanding. No, she shook her head. Absolutely not. The clerk said the person called to cancel with the explanation that Dr. Scarpetta was very disappointed she couldn’t make it to Savannah because it’s one of her favorite cities, and he hoped there would be no charge for the room even through he was canceling at the last minute. Supposedly I’d missed my connection in Atlanta and therefore couldn’t possibly get here in time for the appointment I had. The man was quite chatty, the clerk said, convincing me it was my extroverted chief of staff, Bryce, who has yet to call me back.
The canceled room is like the cargo van, like the note from Kathleen Lawler and the pay phone, like everything else that’s happened today, and I tell myself I’ll know what it’s all about soon enough. I unlock my door and enter a room overlooking the river as a container ship as tall as the hotel silently glides past, headed out to sea, and I try to reach Benton, but he’s not answering. I send him a text message letting him know I’m heading out for a meeting, and I give him the address Jaime gave me, because someone I trust needs to know where I’ll be. But I tell him nothing else, not who I’m going to see or that I’m uneasy and suspicious of just about everyone. Unpacking my overnight bag, I deliberate about changing my clothes and decide not to bother.
Jaime Berger is on a mission in the Lowcountry, and apparently she put Kathleen Lawler up to the task of arranging a meeting with me while I’m here. Indeed, Jaime may have used her to lure me here to begin with. But no matter how much I dissect the information I have, it all seems far-fetched, and I can’t stop sorting through it in hopes it will make sense. But it seems impossibly illogical. If Jaime is behind my coming to the GPFW today and knows I’m spending the night in this hotel, then why would she need an inmate to sneak a cell phone number to me? Why wouldn’t Jaime simply call me herself? My cell phone number hasn’t changed. Hers hasn’t, either. She has my e-mail address.
She could have reached me directly any number of ways, and why a pay phone? What was that about? The cargo van, my canceled reservation, and I think about what Tara Grimm said to me.
I study myself in the mirror over the bathroom sink and decide I look wilted by heat and rain, by hours spent in a prison and driving a malfunctioning van with no air-conditioning, and this isn’t the way I want Jaime to see me. I can’t completely define the way she makes me feel, but I recognize ambivalence and self-consciousness, a certain discomfort that has never gone away in all the years I’ve known her. It’s irrational, but I can’t seem to help it. To watch Lucy so openly adore her was indescribable.
I remember the first time they met more than a decade ago, how animated Lucy was, how riveted she was to Jaime’s every word and gesture. Lucy couldn’t take her eyes off her, and when it finally became what it was meant to become many years later, I was amazed and pleased. I was startled and unnerved. Most of all, I didn’t trust it. Lucy was going to get hurt, I thought all along. She was going to get as badly hurt as she’s ever been in her life, I feared. No woman she’s ever been with can compare to Jaime, who is close to my age and undeniably powerful and compelling. She’s rich. She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful.
I scrutinize my short blond hair and muss it with a dab of gel, staring at the face staring back at me. The overhead light is unkind, creating shadows that accentuate my strong features, deepening the fine lines at the corners of my eyes and the shallow folds from my nose to my mouth. I look shopworn. I look older. Jaime’s going to sum me up in a glance by saying that what I’ve been going through has taken its toll. Almost being murdered has left its mark. Stress is toxic. It kills cells. It causes your hair to fall out. Extreme stress interferes with sleep and you never look rested. I don’t look awful, really. It’s the lighting in here, and I think of Kathleen Lawler’s complaints about bad lighting and bad mirrors as I uncomfortably recall recent comments Benton has made.
I’m starting to look more like my mother, he mentioned the other day when he came up behind me and put his arms around me as I was getting dressed. He said it was the style of my hair, maybe because it’s a little shorter, and he meant it as a compliment, but I didn’t take it as one. I don’t want to look like my mother, because I don’t want to be anything like my mother, not anything like my only sibling, Dorothy, either, both of them still in Miami and always complaining about one thing or another. The heat, the neighbors, the neighbors’ dogs, the feral cats, politics, crime, the economy, and, of course, me. I’m a bad daughter, a bad sister, and a bad aunt to Lucy. I never come to visit and rarely call. I’ve forgotten my Italian heritage, my mother said to me recently, as if growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Miami somehow makes me a native of the Old Country.
Outside the hotel, the sun has dipped behind stone and brick buildings along Bay Street, and the air is still hot but not nearly as humid. A bell in City Hall tolls, its rich metallic peal sounding the half hour as I follow steep granite steps down to River Street, walking behind and below the hotel. Through lighted arched windows on the lower level I see a ballroom being set up for some event, and then the river is before me. It has turned a deep indigo blue in the waning light of the approaching night, and the sky is clearing, the moon huge and egg-shaped as it rises, and
