between his lower lip and gum. ”I got some things working,“ he says, putting the Explorer in gear. ”I’ll let you know something, one way or another.“
”What do you have working?“ I ask anxiously.
He winks and grins. ”Don’t ask, don’t tell, right? Later, bud.“
The Explorer’s tires squeal as Sonny skids around the silent bell and roars back toward the highway.
The early afternoon passed without surprises. Shad Johnson cussed out the chief of police for arresting Drew, but he did nothing else about it. The whereabouts of Cyrus White remained unknown. My father spoke to Quentin Avery, but the famed civil rights lawyer did not promise anything beyond ”giving some thought to your son’s situation.“ I picked up Annie from school at three and drove her to softball practice at Liberty Park. I often stay and watch her practices, when I’m not drafted into coaching myself.
She’s hitting well today, but her fielding is less than spectacular. The coach ends practice early for some reason, and Annie walks over with a dejected expression on her face. I’m about to console her when my cell phone rings. The ID says it’s my father.
”Hey, Dad. What’s up?“
”Quentin Avery just called me.“
A fillip of excitement runs through me. ”Yeah?“
”He says he’s bringing a lawyer by my office, one who’d be perfect for defending Drew. He wants you to meet him. Can you get away?“
”Hell, yes. What time?“
”Daddy, you’re cursing again,“ Annie reminds me.
I smile and tug on her ponytail. ”What time?“
”Now. Quentin already had an appointment to get his foot checked, so I guess he figured he’d kill two birds with one stone.“
”Who’s the lawyer?“
”He didn’t say.“
”Okay, fine. I’m on my way. I just have to drop Annie off.“
”Was that Papa?“ Annie asks when I hang up.
”How did you know?“
”By the way you talk to him. It’s different than when you talk to me.“
Annie has more intuition than I ever did. ”You’re just like your mother, girl.“
All the humor goes out of her face. ”Am I really?“
”You are. Just like her.“
After we get in the car and start toward the highway, Annie says, ”You and Caitlin haven’t been talking much lately, have you?“
”No. She’s pretty busy up in Boston.“
Annie mulls this over. ”It sure seems like it. But I thought she’d come down and visit us more often.“
”I did, too, punkin. So did Caitlin. Work is something adults don’t have a lot of choice about sometimes.“
”Can I ask you something personal, Daddy?“
”Sure, Boo.“
”Is Mia too young for you?“
The question leaves me speechless.
”I mean, I know she is,“ Annie goes on, ”but she seems really mature for her age, and I really like her a lot. She doesn’t seem at all like the other high school kids, you know? She reads the same kind of books you do, and she’s really pretty, and-“
”Annie.“
My daughter’s eyes go wide, as though she’s hoping for good news but expecting bad.
I reach over and squeeze her hand. ”Mia’s got a lot to do before it’s time for her to settle down, baby. She has to go to college and figure out what she’s going to do with her life. Just like you will in about ten years.“
”Nine years,“ Annie corrects. ”I’ll be eighteen in nine years. I just thought she’d be a cool mom, that’s all. For somebody, you know?“
”I think you’re right.“ I lean over and hug her to my chest so she can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. My daughter so desperately needs a maternal figure, and I have failed to provide one. Right now-for the first time, really-I feel true anger at Caitlin for spending so much time away. I don’t think she was honest with me or with herself when she took her latest ”temporary“ assignment.
”I need to run down to Papa’s office for a while, Boo. I’ll see if I can get Mia to sit, okay?“
”Okay,“ she says in a bored voice, as though seeing Mia holds no excitement whatever.
I take out my cell phone and speed-dial Mia’s number.
Chapter 19
My father’s private office is a library devoted to medicine and military history. Scale models of World War Two tanks and planes stand beside ships from the Napoleonic era, and hand-painted lead soldiers guard every bookshelf in the room.
”How’s Drew holding up?“ Dad asks from behind his desk. My father is six feet tall with white hair, a silver beard, and piercing eyes that have witnessed most of the ways the human body and soul can fail.
”It’s hard to tell.“
”Did that drug dealer named in the paper kill Kate Townsend?“
”I honestly don’t know.“
”You don’t look very confident. What’s your worst fear, Penn?“
I haven’t really thought about it that way. ”To anyone but you, I’d have answered it’s that Drew will be wrongfully convicted of murder.“
”But to me?“
I close my eyes, and when I speak, the truth emerges as though by its own decision. ”It’s that Drew might have killed Kate without meaning to. The girl was highly sexual, despite her youth, and she liked to be choked during sex. She died of strangulation. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see the possible link.“
”But Drew denies anything like that?“
”Yes.“
A buzz sounds from Dad’s phone, and Esther tells him she’s on her way back with Quentin Avery.
”Where’s Annie right now?“ Dad asks.
”I had Mia meet me outside and take her home. I didn’t know how long we’d be.“
He looks past me and rises from behind his desk, his eyes twinkling. ”There’s Quentin! Come in here, man.“
I turn and face the door. Often, when I meet someone I’ve seen only in pictures or on film, I find the actual human being to be much smaller in reality. That’s not the case with Quentin Avery. The famed lawyer may be over seventy, but he still carries the charismatic aura of a man who once strode boldly across the national stage. Despite the loss of his foot, he still stands six-feet-four, and he wears his white hair in a tight Afro hairstyle. His eyes have a greenish tint, and his skin is lighter than that of most Natchez blacks, but it’s darker than Shad Johnson’s, which is so light that some people have called him ”more white than black.“ But Avery’s appearance means nothing in the end. This man standing in my father’s office has argued multiple cases before the United States Supreme Court- argued and
