notebook and wrote down the number.
“Why do you want that?”
“To find out who she’s been calling,” Frank said.
She looked at him with an odd sympathy. “It must feel odd, to do what you do. I mean, it’s something like a Peeping Tom, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Frank admitted.
He closed the notebook, put it in his pocket and looked up at her. She was standing in the doorway, her body framed by a soft, purplish light. Her beauty swept over him like a thirsty wind. There was a kind of isolation in her eyes, a separateness from ordinary experience, and he wondered if her sister had felt the same aloneness, had walked down lost, desolate streets and listened to the catcalls of the men she passed until there was nothing to do but return to the innocence of a little girl’s room. It was the sort of loneliness he’d known in others, known in himself, and he knew how easily it could turn to rage.
“The play she was in,” he said. “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” Karen said. “It was the only time she ever invited me to anything.” She shook her head slowly. “We’re burying her tomorrow. Will you come to the funeral?”
“Yes,” Frank said.
“It’s part of the routine, I guess,” Karen said.
Frank shrugged. “That’s part of it,” he said, “but it’s not the whole thing.”
15
It was almost noon the next day when Angelica Devereaux was buried in one of Atlanta’s most exclusive cemeteries. It was the sort of exquisitely kept ground that up until recent years had never received the body of a black or a Jew. It held to a certain rigid dignity, the sort that looked as if money couldn’t buy it, even though everyone knew that it was the only thing that could.
“They’ll probably bury the mayor here,” Caleb said, his lips fluttering around the stem of his pipe. “That’ll make integration complete.”
To Frank, it had only mattered that Angelica was being buried. He could still remember the feel of her clothing. He’d gone through it the day before, fingering the pockets of her ordered blouses and neatly folded jeans for some note with a name or number on it. The closets had revealed nothing, and so, as Karen stood in the doorway, he had gone through the drawers of the vanity, then the bureau, had peered under the canopy bed and beneath the primly stuffed pillows. The underside of things revealed no more than their appearances, and a little girl’s room remained a little girl’s room forever.
“Who’s the guy with the white hair and black suit?” Caleb asked.
“Arthur Cummings,” Frank said.
Caleb leaned against the large elm and sucked his teeth. “Oh yeah, the guardian.”
Even from the distance, Frank could hear the low moan of the Episcopalian minister as he began his prayer for Angelica’s salvation.
“I recognize that guy on Cummings’ right,” Caleb said, “the headmaster.” He squinted against the bright light. “But who’s the blonde guy with the hairdo?”
“James Theodore. Friend of Karen’s.”
The sound of prayer died away, and Karen stepped forward. For a moment she remained, staring into the open grave. Then she took a spadeful of reddish earth and scattered it over Angelica’s coffin.
“From the look of it, Frank,” Caleb said, “Angelica didn’t have many friends.”
“No teachers from the school. No students.”
“You think the little papa might be here?”
Frank glanced at one face, then another: Cummings, Morrison, Theodore, and at last, a small, squat man in a gray suit and hornrimmed glasses.
“The guy in the gray suit,” he said. “He looks familiar.”
Caleb shook his head. “I think Angelica could have done better than that.”
“I’ve seen him somewhere,” Frank said thoughtfully. He was not sure exactly what he remembered, the flabby round face, the short, stocky body, the enormous glasses, but it was something unpleasant. He replayed his past cases, searching for some detail that would sweep the man back into his memory.
Then, suddenly, the man reached in his jacket pocket and fingered the antenna of a small remote receiver.
“He’s a doctor,” Frank whispered. He looked over to Caleb. “There was a woman, a society woman. They found her dead in her house on the Prado.”
Caleb watched him. “This one’s new to me, Frank.”
“She’d OD’d on something,” Frank continued. “Alvin brought the doctor in for questioning.”
Caleb’s eyes slowly shifted back to the little man in the gray suit.
“It turns out he was one of those Dr. Feelgood types,” Frank said. “He was pretty much giving a few rich people anything they wanted. Loading them up on prescription drugs.”
“Did they nail him?”
“No, he slipped by,” Frank said. “There was some talk about the medical society checking him out, but I don’t know if anything ever came of that.”
Caleb took out a large handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his neck. “Well, as a group, we got the family lawyer, the family educator … maybe we got the family doctor, too.”
“Maybe,” Frank said. His eyes had shifted over to Karen. She stood beside the grave, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes fixed on the open ground and the coffin which rested in it. She looked sadder than he had ever seen her. It was as if she were mourning everything around her, the bright midday light that swept the grounds, the stifling heat, the enormous magnolia that rose beside the grave, even the small bird that could be heard from somewhere deep in its lush growth.
Within a moment the service was over, and Frank continued to watch as Karen and the rest of them moved toward their waiting limousines.
“Remembered awhile, forgot forever,” Caleb said. “That’s what my mother used to say.”
The doctor was leaving too, and Frank walked over to him immediately.
The doctor’s eyes lifted slowly as Frank approached. They were large and brown, and they gave his face a cuddly expression.
Frank flashed his badge.
The man smiled. “I thought you were the police.”
“Did you?”
“Like in the movies. They always go to the funeral of the deceased.” He thrust out his hand. “I’m Herman Clark, Dr. Herman Clark.”
Frank shook his hand quickly. “I’m handling the investigation into Angelica’s death.” He took out his notebook. “Did you know her?”
“I suppose you could say I was her physician,” Clark said. “I suppose you must have discovered that she was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the physician who confirmed that.”
“Confirmed?”
“Told Angelica,” Dr. Clark explained.
“She came to your office?”
“Yes.”
“Did someone recommend you?”
“She said she took my name from the phone book,” Dr. Clark told him. “As far as I know, that’s how she found me.”
“And you saw her in your office?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
