“Where the hell am I?” She said to the empty room.
“Why, you are in my office, young lady,” a voice behind her said, startling her so badly that she fell off the settee. “Where else would you be?”
She jumped up and her joints that had suffered from inaction in the cold, dark file room creaked and moaned with the effort. When did I get so old?
“Last thing I remember, I was down in the— “
“That dreadful cellar where they keep the old ghosts of guilt and innocence over at the revered and much-lauded Savannah Police Department,” the man interrupted her. “I know. I watched with great interest, and I must admit, a bit of mirth, as the portly Officer Thompson carried you up from the depths. He was about as pink and bloated as a prize-winning pig headed for slaughter.”
Amber couldn’t help but smile at the perfectly accurate description of Fat Rick.
“Apparently, your chief of police decided to get you up and out of there with the box you were working on for some fresh air. I just happened to be passing through and I suggested that perhaps your digitizing work could be performed here—the space requirements of your task somewhat exceeding the space in the Savannah Police Department. And, here you are. With me.”
The man, tall, lanky, and impossibly skinny stood in the doorway of the room with his hands crossed behind his back. His pale blue suit looked as if it was still on its hanger, draped across nothing more than the thin collarbones jutting out from below his neck. A snow-white beard, just a day away from being unkempt, grew on the man’s pale face under rosy, whiskey-veined cheeks. A cream-colored straw Fedora sat on the back of his head, cocked at an angle that suggested he was a fan of Humphrey Bogart, or perhaps that he just didn’t care anymore.
“Do I know you?” She asked, as a tickle of recognition wandered across her brain.
“Young lady,” he said, stepping into the room, “I believe everyone in the counties of Effingham, Bryan, Liberty, Long, McIntosh, Glynn, and naturally, Chatham knows who I am. In fact, I believe they may know me as far away as Telfair and Wheeler … maybe even Briggs.”
He stretched out a hand to her and she saw he had a cane in the other, stabilizing himself. “Minter Tweed,” he said, showing pearly-white teeth. Ah, now she recognized him. He was famous, or rather, infamous in the antebellum town of Savannah and occasionally trolled the police department for potential clients.
A few minutes later, she was sitting in a high-backed leather armchair across from Minter Tweed’s heavy, but not ostentatious mahogany desk that might have come off the Titanic. She could easily imagine Winston Churchill sitting behind it, with a cigar jammed in his jaw. The office was massive. A huge conference table with eight chairs arranged around it gleamed in the sunlight that poured into ten-foot-tall floor to ceiling windows. Whitewashed plantation shutters were opened just enough to allow the sun to draw long, ever-widening bands of light along the forest green plush carpet. French doors opened out onto a balcony that overlooked a picturesque city square.
Tweed was carefully placing ice cubes in two crystal tumblers with sterling silver tongs. He poured a dark brown liquid from a pitcher filling each glass half way. He handed one to Amber.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m on duty,” she said, holding up one hand.
“You don’t drink iced tea on duty, Miss Cross?” His smile was infectious and his eyes twinkled. The man reminded her of Santa. Anorexic Santa. He held out a bowl with several lemon slices that had been coated with sugar. “Care to have a lemon?”
She took the glass and two lemons. She squeezed them gently into the tea and then plopped them in. The tea was exquisitely sweet with exactly the perfect amount of tartness. It flowed over her tongue like liquid silk.
“Jesus Christ that’s good tea,” Amber exclaimed, then covered her mouth at her outburst.
“It is damn fine tea,” he grinned, taking a small bottle of bourbon from the bar behind him and filling his glass up to the rim. “But you can just call me Minter.”
She drank the tea faster than she had meant to and he filled it up again.
“It’s a Darjeeling blend, fruity and floral on its own, but I like to add a bit of sugar and lemon.”
“And bourbon, I see,” she said, holding her glass up as if to toast.
“Only when I’m working,” He winked at her and drained his glass. She could swear she’d seen another mischievous twinkle in the man’s eyes. Who is this guy? She thought.
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. They were as thin as the rest of him and put her in mind of a praying mantis.
“Well now, Miss Cross, we have a lovely late afternoon ahead of us. Shall we take a look at the moldy mess of files they brought over with you?”
His voice was something like the old PBS painter, Bob Ross, and she was momentarily lulled by his lazy, Georgia native accent. Amber snapped to attention, sitting upright in her chair. The files. The Marcario Morales file. What was she supposed to do again? Tweed motioned to a spot on the floor beside the conference table. Three long cardboard boxes sat in a neat stack beside the conference table. On the end of the top
