Sleep No More

The printer jammed halfway through the job, and as he helped Sybil clear it, he felt tempted to ask her some questions. If she was sleeping with Cole, as he suspected, she might know a lot about his financial problems. She might also know if he’d had any recent contact with Eve. But Sybil seemed to be in a down mood, and he didn’t want her to think the company was in more trouble than she knew about already.

At a quarter to five, Sybil headed out to the post office to mail the bills. Cole still hadn’t returned, so Waters locked the office and headed home. He was nearly there when his cell phone rang, and he saw a mobile number he didn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“This is your fellow Eagle Scout,” said a male voice.

Waters almost laughed at Penn Cage’s choice of code. “What’s going on?”

“We’re both on mobile phones. Where are you?”

“State Street, on my way home.”

“We need to talk. Your house?”

“Ah…I’d rather meet elsewhere.”

“Okay. How about the parking lot of Heard’s Music Company?”

The lot was only a few hundred yards from Waters’s driveway. “I’ll see you there.”

Waters hung up and sped past his driveway, then crossed one boulevard and turned into the music store parking lot. Waters had bought his last piano here, a nine-foot concert grand. As a boy, he and his mother could only dream of an instrument like that; now he owned a house that seemed incomplete without one. But for how long? he thought.

As he parked the Land Cruiser, Penn leaned out of a green Audi TT and motioned for him to get in. When Waters climbed into the convertible, Penn shook his hand and smiled.

“What’s up?” Waters asked. “Do you know something?”

“The police have a new lead. They’re keeping quiet about it, but Caitlin has a source inside the department.”

“And?”

Penn grimaced. “The guy thought he heard your name mentioned.”

“Shit.” A wild, unreasoning fear hit Waters in the bowels. “Was he sure?”

“Nothing’s sure yet. I don’t know what they have. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

Waters thought of the week at Bienville, then the nights at the Eola. “I don’t know. Maybe someone saw us, but we didn’t see them?”

“That may be it.”

“I’ve always been worried about Eve’s house. She’s bound to have had stuff about me in there.”

“Well, until we know something for sure, you should sit tight and stay calm. Go back over everything and try to anticipate the situation.”

Waters’s face suddenly felt cold.

“What is it, John?”

“I just talked to Cole, like you said to. Confronted him.”

“And?”

“He told me he knew I was with Eve at the Eola.”

Penn’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How could he know that?”

“He was coy about it. Said he followed me for a few days. But I think that was bullshit. I can’t see him doing that.”

“No. If he knows, it’s because Eve told him you would be there.” Penn tapped the steering wheel. “What if she called him to come up after you passed out, thinking he was going to do something to you? When in reality he was going to kill her all along, and frame you.”

Waters shook his head. “Cole couldn’t do that.”

“Are you so sure? What did he say about selling the pumping unit?”

“He admitted it. He’s up to his eyeballs in debt. To bookies, Vegas casinos, everybody.”

Penn turned up his palms, as if this proved his case.

“Did you find out anything about Mallory’s diaries?” Waters asked, wanting to change the subject.

“As a matter of fact, I did. I talked to Mrs. Candler for quite a while. I told her I was thinking of doing a nonfiction book about Natchez, and naturally I’d want to include a chapter on our second Miss Mississippi. I got a good bit of information out of her before she got suspicious.”

“Such as?”

“About a year ago-sometime around her husband’s death-some of Mallory’s things disappeared from their house.”

Waters felt a strange premonition, but of what, he wasn’t sure. “Like what?”

“Mallory’s diaries, for one thing.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. Also some jewelry, all Mallory’s. And some personal things of Mallory’s that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but her.”

“What do you think?”

“That tells us that someone has been planning this scam on you for over a year. They broke into the Candler house and took personal things that would help authenticate Eve’s story.”

“How could they take things that no one would know were important but Mallory?”

“John, they were taken from her room. Obviously she had saved them for some sentimental reason. My guess is that if you hadn’t swallowed Eve’s story so quickly, those little items would have started making appearances in your life. On Eve’s arm, or in her purse, maybe.”

Waters felt a strange lightness in his limbs. He leaned back in the seat, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me about Mallory cutting herself,” Penn said. “You said you didn’t believe her when she told you that her father had sexually abused her.”

Waters nodded.

“Well, I’ve been asking questions about her family. Nobody could be very specific, but I got the feeling that Ben Candler was a little strange where sex was concerned.”

“How so?”

“A little pervy about young girls. He made inappropriate comments sometimes. He and his wife apparently had a nonsexual relationship. That’s the gist, anyway. The mother had an affair at some point, but when it threatened Ben’s political career, she ended it.”

“Political career? Shit, he was only a state representative.”

“Ben Candler took that very seriously, as you know.”

“Oh, do I. He liked to give you the impression that if the country went to DEF CON Three, he would be making the critical decisions about launching nuclear missiles.”

“You got it. And he held that job for six terms.”

“Old Ben knew how to kiss ass.”

“Yes, he did.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Waters said. “When I visited Mallory’s grave after the soccer game, I noticed two things I didn’t tell you. They didn’t seem important then. Her father is buried next to her. He has a small, cheap gravestone. And it was defaced, like someone had taken a crowbar to it.”

“Ben Candler only died about a year ago,” Penn said. “So Mallory couldn’t have defaced the stone. It could be his wife, I suppose. Or someone else he sexually harassed.”

Waters nodded, but that wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’ll tell you something else. It stunk by his grave.”

“What do you mean, stunk? Like what?”

“Urine. Like an animal came there every day and pissed on his grave.”

Penn looked incredulous. “I can’t see prim old Margaret Candler driving to the cemetery to piss on her husband’s grave every day.” He shook his head and laughed. “Maybe once a week, though.”

“Mallory would,” Waters said quietly.