His phone buzzed, and he snapped out of his reverie.
“Your wife on line one,” Sybil informed him.
“I’ve got it.” He hit the button. “Hey, Lil.”
“Have you heard about Eve Sumner?”
“I heard.”
“Isn’t it just unbelievable?”
The open line hissed in his right ear.
“John, I’ve been thinking.”
He waited.
“The rumor is, Eve was meeting someone at the hotel, and whoever it was killed her.”
“I haven’t heard that.”
“Oh, you know she was. Having an affair, I mean. That was what Eve did. She couldn’t find the love she needed, so she just kept looking. And ever since I heard about it, all I can think about is us.”
“Us? Why?”
“Because…I know you were gone last night.”
His chest tightened so suddenly that he found it hard to breathe.
“I know you were probably just taking a ride like you do sometimes. But think if you had been doing something. I couldn’t blame you if you were. Not with the way things have been between us. And what happened to Eve…that kind of thing could happen to anybody. When you’re desperate, and you go looking in the wrong places for something you should have at home-”
“Lily, don’t,” he said, surprised by the hysteria in her voice.
She sobbed, then choked it back. “I’m so
Why hadn’t Lily said these things two weeks ago? Maybe he could have resisted Eve’s siren song. “It’s all right, babe. Everything’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. And I want to stop pretending that it is. I don’t want to lose you, John.”
“I might. Are you coming straight home after work?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” She paused, but he sensed that she wanted to say more. “I want to put Annelise to bed early tonight,” she added. “And I…I want to make love with you. The way I used to.”
“Lily-”
“I love you, John.”
“I love you too.”
After a few moments, she hung up, and he set the phone in its cradle.
Her call almost pushed him into a manic state. How could things unfold this way? How could the death of a near-stranger change his wife’s attitude about sex when all his most patient efforts could not? And how could that stranger be the woman he had turned to for succor in his need? He felt trapped in some crazy Greek tragedy where only the Fates and Furies knew their roles well enough to carry them off.
He wanted to leave the office, but for appearance’s sake, he felt he should stick it out until five. He soon found himself pondering morbid ironies, like the fact that Eve’s body almost certainly now lay on the same embalming table that Mallory’s had lain upon ten years ago. Natchez had come a long way in race relations, but it was still segregated in death. If you died white in this town, or were to be buried here, there was only one funeral home to go to. Of course, her body might not be there yet. There would have to be an autopsy. He had no idea where that would be carried out. Would a Natchez pathologist do it? Or would the body be shipped to the state capital, Jackson?
What would the autopsy reveal? Was he right about strangulation? Or was there some other possibility? He had seen marks on her throat and petechiae around her eyes. But what if those marks had been made during the last minutes of their lovemaking, when he held her down on the mattress? What if something else had killed her? A heart attack? Or a stroke? Natchez was a small town, and Waters knew two women in their forties who had died of strokes in the past few years. Lily thought it had something to do with birth control pills. Eve wasn’t on the pill. She’d had her tubes tied. She was also in her early thirties. On the other hand, she’d led a wild life. Who knew what was possible? Eve might have been taking drugs the whole time he’d known her, which was only two weeks, after all. Cocaine caused heart attacks all the time. Strange as it seemed, these thoughts lifted his spirits. The alternative was to face the fact that he had strangled a woman for whom he had cared a great deal.
He went to a small refrigerator under his wet bar and took out a bottle of water, then returned to his desk. That brief activity exhausted him. He was puzzled until he remembered that he hadn’t slept last night. Laying his head on the desk, he tried to resist the worries that had been eating at him all day.
“John? Hey, John!”
Waters started and looked up into Sybil’s concerned face.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“It’s five-thirty. Do you want me to stay?”
He looked at his watch. He’d slept for two hours. “No, no. You go home. I’m sorry. Is Cole still here?”
“No, he left around four. He didn’t say where he was going.”
Sybil sounded put out by this, but it could have been Waters’s imagination. “Let’s shut it down and go home,” he said. “I want to see my daughter.”
Sybil smiled, but her eyes were sad. “Ana’s a lucky little girl. One day she’ll know that.”
Turning into his drive, Waters stopped at the mailbox from habit. Junk mail and a couple of party invitations were stuffed between copies of the
Will Hinson was a well-checker. He monitored the daily operations of oil wells all over the county for a monthly fee. Though he checked about a dozen Smith-Waters wells, most communication was handled by telephone.
“How do, John?” Hinson said.
“Fine, Will. How’re you doing?”
“Not bad. Don’t want to bother you, but I saw you pull in.”
“I’m glad you stopped. Everything going okay?”
“Oh, fair. Always something to fix, but you know. You get the bills for it. Reason I stopped, I saw ’em hauling off the pumping unit at your Madam X well.”
Waters blinked in confusion. “You what?”
“I thought you might be replacing it, but then I remembered it was a three-twenty. Didn’t figure you wanted to push any more fluid than that.”
Waters wondered if Hinson was getting what Rose called “old-timer’s disease.” “Are you sure this was on our lease?”
“Yessir. I don’t check that well, but I stopped and asked the crew what they thought they was doing. They said you boys had sold the unit to a Texas outfit. That’s where that rig’s bound right now. Oil City, Texas.”
This news was shocking enough to bring Waters out of his haze. “I’d better make some calls. Somebody made a mistake somewhere.”
The older man nodded, but it was clear he had more to say.
“What is it, Will?”
“It was me? I’d call my partner first.”
Waters went still. “Tell me what you know.”
“I’m not one to talk behind anybody’s back. But you’re a pretty trusting fella, John. Just like your dad.”
