She takes a deep breath and seems to gather herself before answering. “No, thank you. I saw Annie through the window. I know you’re busy.”
“It’s all right. Really.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think I could take it. I used to help Kate with her homework just like that, after her father left.”
What does one say at these moments? There’s nothing appropriate, so I remain silent. Jenny actually looks grateful that I’m not forcing her to make small talk.
“I’ve heard a lot of rumors today,” she says with obvious difficulty. “Some were pretty terrible. One was that you’re representing Drew Elliott.”
So, that’s what this visit is about. “Drew is an old friend, Jenny. You know that. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through, but I feel obligated to try to help Drew through this.”
“Oh, you misunderstood me,” she says. “I didn’t mean that you representing Drew was terrible. In fact, I was glad to hear that. That’s why I brought you this.” She gestures with the box but doesn’t quite offer it to me.
“What is that?”
“Kate’s things. Her private things. I haven’t looked at all of them. I’m not sure I could bear it, and it wasn’t meant for my eyes anyway.” Jenny brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, then flinches at some inner pain. “Katie kept this hidden in the attic. There’s a diary, some souvenirs, and some computer disks. I think that’s where she kept her pictures of Drew. I think some of them are probably…intimate pictures.”
“I see,” I say softly.
“Penn, I don’t know what happened to my daughter yesterday. The police tell me she was raped and murdered. I don’t know anything for certain right now, but I
A flood of relief washes through me. “I’m so glad to hear that, Jenny. I believe the same thing.”
“That’s why I’m leaving this box with you.”
I nod but say nothing.
She looks down at my welcome mat and speaks with a new tension in her voice. “The police and the sheriff’s department have gotten more aggressive with their questioning. They want to search my house from top to bottom for clues to Kate’s ‘recent lifestyle.’ I don’t want them to see what’s in this box.” Jenny looks up, her chin quivering. “Those men have no right to invade my daughter’s privacy. This is a difficult thing for me to do, Penn. If it turns out that Drew did harm Kate, perhaps without even meaning to, this box contains the only physical evidence of their relationship.”
“Maybe you should keep it, then.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t. And there’s no one else. I have no close family here, and even if I did, I wouldn’t trust them with it. I’m not even sure I trust myself with it. That’s why I’m not putting it in a safe-deposit box. I’m trusting you because of who you are and who your father is. Your father was my doctor when I was young. Tom Cage has more integrity than any man I’ve ever known, and I don’t think the apple fell far from the tree. I respect what you did in solving that old civil rights murder, for not giving a damn what people around here thought about it.” I start to interject, but she motions for me to be quiet and pushes on. “I don’t know what’s going to happen about Katie in the next few weeks, but if somewhere along the way you come to believe that Drew hurt my baby, I expect you to make sure that the right people see what’s in this box.”
I nod slowly, not quite believing that this is happening.
Jenny holds out the box. “I want you to give me your word as a gentleman, Penn. I know that word is sort of outdated, but I still believe it applies in some cases.”
“You have my word, Jenny.”
Even as I accept the box and cradle it under my right arm, I wonder what I’m doing. How can I defend Drew in court if I’ve vowed to make sure he is punished if he turns out to be guilty? Maybe that’s why I’m taking the box. Maybe it’s my way out of defending Drew at trial.
“Daddy?” Annie calls from the living room. “Who is it?”
“I’m going to run on,” Jenny says.
“I don’t know what to say, Jenny.”
She turns away, walks to the top step, then looks back. “The district attorney told me Kate was pregnant. It must have been Drew’s baby.”
I nod slowly.
“Do you think he would have married her, Penn? Tell me the truth.”
“Jenny, that’s the one thing in this whole mess that I’m absolutely sure of. He’d have married her tomorrow if he could.”
She tilts back her head and blinks away tears, then gives me a shattered smile and hurries into the night.
In the silence on my front steps, I feel tears coming to my own eyes. How did we bring ourselves to this pass? Jenny Townsend in her solitary grief; Drew sitting alone in jail; Kate Townsend lying dead on a slab somewhere in Jackson, an ugly Y-incision stitched into her torso; an empty chair at Harvard that will now be filled by some luckier kid who will never know what tragedy brought him or her there. Did all this result from Drew’s forbidden love of Kate? Or do I trace it back to Drew’s wife and the hydrocodone addiction that Drew says killed their marriage? Or-
“Daddy?” Annie calls from the door. “Can’t you hear the phone?”
“No, Boo,” I say softly. “I’m coming.”
I walk to the kitchen and pick up the telephone. “This is Penn.”
“Penn? Walter Hunt.”
It takes me a moment to switch gears. Walter Hunt is an accountant who lives in Sherwood Estates, and a neighbor of Drew’s. He has two kids in St. Stephen’s.
“What can I do for you, Walter?”
“Nothing for me, but I thought you’d like to know-Ellen Elliott is piling up furniture and all kinds of stuff in her front yard. Looks like Drew’s stuff to me-golf clubs and skis-guns, too. To tell you the truth, it looks like she’s building a bonfire.”
“Timmy’s over here with us. My wife went over and slipped in their back door.”
“Don’t let anybody call the police. I’ll be there in no time.”
“Hurry, Penn. Ellen’s so toasted, she can barely walk.”
Chapter 10
I’m sitting on my front steps with Annie, waiting impatiently for Mia Burke to arrive. Annie is playing Scooby- Doo on her Game Boy Advance. I’m trying to focus on the perfume of a white narcissus, which blooms liberally on Washington Street this time of year, but at this moment it’s hard to enjoy anything. My mind won’t leave the Jimmy Choo shoe box I just hid atop the armoire in my upstairs guest room, the box that contains the secret history of Kate Townsend’s life with Drew. I shudder to think what would be happening now if the police had discovered that box during a search of Jenny Townsend’s house. The only thing keeping me from going through Kate’s personal things right now is my fear that Ellen Elliott may do something to hurt Drew as badly as she can out of revenge.
After failing to reach Ellen by phone, I called Mia, who agreed to watch Annie until I get back. Before she hung up, Mia told me she had something to tell me about “the Kate situation,” but she refused to say more on her cell phone. Since Mia is plugged into the high school information grid, she may know things that I or the police couldn’t discover in a year of asking questions.
Annie looks up from the glow of her Game Boy and fixes me in a serious gaze. “Daddy, everybody keeps asking me why I wasn’t in the pageant this year. Why can’t I tell them?”
I take a deep breath and sigh. The Confederate Pageant has been the center of white social life in Natchez for the past seventy years. Replete with hoop skirts, sabers, and rebel uniforms, this celebration of pre-Civil War life in the Deep South is one of the most politically incorrect spectacles in the United States. Yet it remains an institution
