“Where’s Lynne Merrill these days?” he asked.
The smile froze on Penn’s face, but he recovered quickly and tried to play off his surprise. “In New Orleans for a while, I think.”
After an awkward moment, Waters said, “I’m sorry I said that. I was…trying to figure something out.”
The author looked intrigued. “Something besides whether Lynne was the basis for Livy Marston in my book?”
“I knew that from the moment I saw her on the page. No, I wanted to know if you ever get over something like that. An affair like that. A—”
“A woman like that?” Penn finished. He looked deep into Waters’s eyes, his own glinting with the power of his perception. It was a bluntly penetrative act, and Waters felt oddly violated by it. “My answer is yes,” Cage said slowly. “But somehow I don’t think you’d answer that question the same way tonight.”
When Waters said nothing, Penn added, “It’s not a passive thing, you know? You have to work it out of you. Or something has to. Someone. If you’re lucky, you meet a woman who finally obliterates all trace of the one who—who came before. Or knocks the memory down to a tolerable level, anyway.”
“Penn!” Caitlin called from the gallery. “I need to get over to the paper. Get me a gimlet for the road.”
At that moment, Lily touched Waters’s shoulder and said, “Go take care of that girl, Penn Cage. I need my husband.”
Penn smiled and walked over to the steps, but as he ascended them, he glanced back over his shoulder, and Waters saw deep interest in his eyes.
“Let’s go,” Lily said quietly. “I’d like to just slip around the side of the house, but we need to tell Mike we enjoyed ourselves.”
Waters followed her up the steps and into the main hall. Conversation indoors had grown to a din, and most faces were flushed from alcohol. Lily walked quickly to discourage buttonholing, but she kept an eye out for their host as she picked a course through the crowd. As they neared the front door, she caught sight of him, but there were too many people between them to make progress. Mike helplessly turned up his hands, then blew Lily a kiss and waved good-bye. Waters nodded thankfully and started toward the door with Lily on his heels. He had his hand on the knob when an old woman cried, “Lily Waters, it’s been a coon’s age! You come here and talk to me this instant!”
Lily reluctantly broke away and walked to a lushly upholstered chair to pay her respects to a grande dame of the Pilgrimage Garden Club.
As Waters stood in the crowded hall, a cool hand closed around his wrist, and something feather-soft brushed the side of his face. Before he could react, a sultry voice said, “You didn’t imagine anything, Johnny. It’s me. Me. Call me tomorrow.” Then something wet brushed the shell of his ear. Before he could jerk away, sharp teeth bit down on his earlobe, and then the air was cold against his skin. He tried not to whirl, but he turned quickly enough to see the red dress and black mane of hair vanish through the door.
He thought Eve was gone, but then she reappeared, the upper half of her face hidden by an eerily predatory mask of sequins and feathers. She did not smile, but her gaze burned through the eyeholes of the mask with such intensity that a shiver went through him. Then the door closed, and she was gone.
“I’m ready,” Lily said from his left. “Let’s go before someone else traps me.”
Waters began to walk on feet he could barely feel.
You didn’t imagine anything…It’s me….
He hesitated at the door. If he walked outside now, he and Lily would have to go down the steps and stand with Eve while they waited for the valets to get their cars. He would have to make small talk. Watch the women measure each other. Call me tomorrow….
“What’s the matter?” asked Lily.
“Nothing.”
Lily pulled open the great door and walked through. Waters hesitated, then stepped out into the flickering yellow light coming from the brass gasolier above their heads.
Eve stood at the foot of the wide steps, her back to them, waiting for her car. Her shoulders were bare, her skin still tanned despite the changing season.
You didn’t imagine anything, Johnny….
As Lily started down the steps, Waters caught movement to his left and instinctively turned toward it. Standing on the porch smoking a cigar was Penn Cage’s father, Tom Cage. A general practitioner who had treated Waters’s father until his death, Tom Cage took a token position in all of Waters’s wells. He’d had a three sixty-fourths interest in the Jackson Point deal.
“Hey, Doc,” Waters said, stepping over and extending his hand. “You recovered from that spanking we took?”
“I’m philosophical about losses,” Dr. Cage replied. “I don’t risk much. I never make a killing, but neither do I lose my buttocks.”
“That’s a good attitude.”
Tom smiled through his silver beard. “You should recommend it to your partner.”
“Cole?”
“Last time Smith was in my office, his pressure was way up. And that scotch isn’t doing his liver any favors. Or his diabetes.”
Cole had been diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes two years ago, but he ignored his condition so regularly that Waters sometimes forgot he had it. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised.
“Good. He doesn’t give a damn what I tell him. And make him take that pressure medication. If it’s giving him side effects, we’ll find another drug.”
“Thanks.”
Waters looked down the steps and saw Lily standing alone as Eve Sumner swept toward the driver’s door of a black Lexus. Eve didn’t acknowledge Waters, but she winked at Lily before she disappeared into the car’s interior. As Waters gaped, the Lexus shot forward with an aggressive rumble.
He descended the steps and stood beside Lily as the Acura pulled up the circular drive. “She must sell a lot of houses,” he said, trying to sound casual. “That was an LS-four-thirty.”
“I wonder who paid for it,” Lily said archly. “But maybe she did. All the real estate agents drive more car than they can afford. They think image is everything in that business.”
Waters got out his wallet and took out some ones for a tip.
“She told me she’d like to see the inside of our house sometime,” Lily went on. “That means somone’s interested in it.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Linton Hill won’t be on the market for as long as I’m alive.”
“That’s pretty definite.”
“It won’t put Eve Sumner off for a week. Watch and see.” Lily brushed something off the front of her dress. “I wonder if her breasts are real.”
Even in his unsettled state of mind, Waters knew not to touch that one. Still, the question surprised him. Lily wasn’t usually given to such comments. Eve Sumner seemed to bring out the cat in her. Maybe she had that effect on all women; hence, her reputation.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice them,” said Lily. “She told some girls down at Mainstream Fitness they’re real, but I think they’re store-bought. She’s a fake-baker too.”
“A what?”
“Her tan, John. Here’s the car.”
Waters tipped the valet and got behind the wheel, his inner ear still cold from the saliva Eve Sumner had left on his skin.
chapter 4
“What do I think? I think you’re losing your mind.”
Cole Smith leaned back in his sumptuous office chair, kicked a pair of gleaming Guccis up on his desk, and lit a Macanudo. His eyes shone with incredulity.
“So how do you explain it?” asked Waters.
“Explain what? Evie wants to do the wild thing. Where’s the mystery?”
“I’m talking about what she said.”
“What she said?” Cole shrugged. “Okay, let’s recap. At the soccer field she said zip. Right? She blew you a kiss.”
“It looked like she said, ‘Soon.’ I told you that.”
“It looked like she might have said that. But Eve Sumner has
no way of knowing what secret things you and Mallory said to each other twenty years ago. And since she didn’t actually say anything, I think we can assume she blew you a freaking kiss.”
“And last night?”
“‘You’re not imagining anything’? ‘Call me tomorrow’?”
“Right.”
Cole chuckled and blew a blue cloud of smoke across his desk. “She’s just recognized what your partner already knows: that since your marriage, you’re a little slow on the uptake where sex is concerned. You haven’t hooked up in, what, twelve years? John Waters, Old Faithful. Last of a breed. Evie’s telling you you’re not wrong, that you’re not imagining that she’s coming on to you. You should call her.”
“What about ‘It’s me’?”
“Maybe she’s already tried to get your attention and you missed it. Sent you something, maybe. ‘It’s me.’ Get it? ‘I’m the one trying to get your attention.’”
“Nobody’s sent me anything.”
Cole sighed wearily but said nothing more.
Waters looked around the room. Cole’s office felt more like a den than a working room. The walls were festooned with Ole Miss Rebels pennants and other memorabilia: a football helmet signed by coach Johnny Vaught, a framed Number 18 Rebels jersey autographed by Archie Manning, a Tennessee Vols jersey autographed by Archie’s son Peyton, snapshots of Cole with pro athletes, a nine-pound bass he’d caught when he was seventeen, samurai swords he’d collected in his early thirties, and countless other souvenirs. Waters always felt a little embarrassed here, but the investors loved it. Even if they supported rival LSU, the Ole Miss relics made for lively conversation.
“What are you telling me, John?” Cole asked. “You think Eve Sumner is really Mallory Candler? Back from the grave?”
“No. I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is, she knew that word, ‘Soon,’ and she knew the context.”
“So what? I knew about it too.”
“You did?”
“Sure. I saw you and Mallory do that a dozen times in Oxford.”
Waters studied his partner’s face, trying to remember how it had looked twenty years ago.
“You did it at frat parties, in the library, all kinds of places. And if I saw it, Mallory’s friends saw it too.”
“But Eve Sumner wasn’t a friend of Mallory’s. She’s ten years younger than Mallory.”
“Maybe Eve has an older sister who was at Ole Miss.”
“Does she?”
“How the hell do I know? I doubt it, though. Evie’s not even from Natchez. She’s from across the river somewhere. I think she graduated from a junior college. Yeah, she told me that. Mallory was a whole different class than Evie, John. Though I hate to admit it.”
“Why do you hate to admit it?”
“Why? Mallory couldn’t stand having me around. Anyone or anything that took you away from her for five seconds, she hated with a passion. Do you remember how bad it got when she lost it? I don’t even want to get into that. She almost fucked up your whole life. That bitch—excuse me, that woman—is dead. And any appearance of evidence to the contrary tells me my best buddy is losing his fucking grip.”
Waters pressed down the disturbing images Cole’s words had conjured. “I’ve never come close to losing my grip.”
Cole nodded indulgently. “Not since Mallory. But everybody has a breaking point. You’re used to having all your ducks in a row. Your whole life is about that. Now everything you have is up in the air. We could both be dead broke in a month. That’s bound to be affecting you down deep.”
“I don’t deny that. But it’s not making me hallucinate.”
“You don’t know that. You’ve never gotten over Mallory, John. You almost did, but then she was murdered, and you actually started feeling sorry for her. Even though the chick might have killed you one day. Or Lily. Or even Annelise. You’ve told me that before.”
“I know.”
Cole leaned forward and laid his cigar in a Colonel Reb ashtray. “Drop this bullshit, Rock. Eve Sumner wants you in her pants—end of story. You got a decision to make: walk the strange road, or keep doing your martyr act.”
“Goddamn it—”
Smith held up his hands in apology. “Sorry, sorry. Saint John of the great blue balls can’t take too much honesty.”
“You want me to be honest about your life?”
Cole sighed. “We’ll save that onerous task for God.”
They fell into silence and were quite comfortable with it. A partnership could be like a marriage that way; two people sitting in a room, neither talking nor feeling the need to, all communication made abundantly clear through a complex interplay of movement, sighs, and glances. Waters and Cole had a lot of practice at this. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, and even attended the same school until the integration laws were enforced and Cole’s parents moved him to St. Stephens Prep. Two years later, Cole’s family moved to a more affluent neighborhood where all the houses had two stories and there were rules about what you could keep in your yard. Waters’s parents had similar plans, but nine months after Cole moved, Henry Waters was standing beside a pipe truck in Wilkinson County when a chain broke and ten thousand pounds of steel pipe casing slid off the truck bed and crushed him.
He lived for three hours, but he never regained consciousness. The doctors never even got him stable enough for surgery. All Waters remembered was a horribly stitched and swollen face with a breathing tube going into the nose and his mother holding a shattered purple hand. John had taken hold of that hand for a few seconds. It was hot and stretched and did not feel natural. The calluses were still there, though, and they let him know it was still his father’s hand. Henry Waters was a good geologist; he didn’t have to do manual labor. But somehow he was always in there with the roughnecks and workover crews, cranking on three-foot wrenches, lifting pumps and motors, thrusting himself into the dirty middle of things. His biggest smiles had always flashed out of a face covered with grease or crude oil.
Cole was the only boy John’s age to attend the funeral. Waters remembered sitting in the pews reserved for family, looking back into rows of old people, and seeing one thirteen-year-old face. After the service, Cole came up and shook his hand with awkward formality. Then he leaned in and quietly said, “This sucks, man. Your dad was a cool guy. I wish it hadn’t happened.” The adult that Cole Smith had grown into would have to commit a profound betrayal to erase the goodwill that this moment of sincerity—and others like it—had engendered. Cole had certainly tested Waters’s patience through the years, but in sum, he was the one man John felt he could trust with his life.
“Speaking of meeting God,” Waters said into the silence. “I saw Tom Cage at Dunleith. He told me you’re not taking your blood pressure medicine.”
Cole picked up his cigar and puffed irritably.
“I know you’re not watching your diabetes. Your weight’s still up, and I never see you check your sugar.”
“It’s under control,” Cole said in a taut voice.
“‘Control’ isn’t the word that comes to mind when I think of you.” Waters let a little emotion enter his voice. “You could stroke out, man. You could go blind. That happened to Pat Davis, and he was only thirty-seven. Diabetes is serious business.”
“Christ, you sound like Jenny. If I want a lecture, I’ll go home, okay?”
Waters was about to reply when Sybil Sonnier, their receptionist, walked in with something for Cole to sign. She did not smile at either of them; she walked primly to the desk and handed Cole the papers. This pricked up Waters’s antennae. Sybil was twenty-eight years old, a divorcee from South Louisiana, and much too pretty to be working in an office with Cole Smith. Cole had “dabbled” with their receptionists before, as he called it, and one of his escapades had cost them over fifty thousand dollars in a legal settlement. At that point, Waters had vowed to do all the hiring himself. But when their last receptionist’s husband lost his job and left town, Waters had b
een on vacation. When he got back, he found Sybil installed at the front desk: one hundred and twenty pounds of curves, dark hair, and smiles. Cole swore he had never touched her, but Waters no longer trusted him about women. When Sybil exited, Waters gave his partner a hard look.
“Sybil’s been pretty cold for the past week. You got any idea why that might be?”
Cole shrugged. “PMS?”
“Cole, goddamn it. Did you sleep with her?”
“Hell no. I learned my lesson about employees when I had to pay reparations.”
“When we had to pay them, you mean. Next time you pay solo, Romeo.”
Cole chuckled. “No problem.”
“Back to your health. You don’t get off that easy.”
Cole frowned and shook his head. “Why don’t you use all this energy you’re expending on paranoia and lectures to generate a new prospect, Rock?”
This was an old bone of contention between them. Their partnership was like a union of the grasshopper and the ant. Whenever they scored big, Waters put forty percent of his money into an account reserved for income taxes. The rest he invested conservatively in the stock market. Each time they drilled a new well, he maintained a large share of it by giving up “override,” or cash profit up front. That way, if they struck oil, he was ensured a large profit over time. Cole preferred to take the lion’s share of cash up front; thus his “completion costs” on the wells were smaller, but so were his eventual profits. Even when Cole kept a large piece of a well, he almost always sold his interest for cash—usually the equivalent of two years’ worth of production—the day after the well hit. And Cole simply could not hang on to cash. He and his wife spent lavishly on houses, cars, antiques, clothing, jewelry, parties, and vacations. He invested in ventures outside the oil business, whatever sounded like big money fast. He had hit some big licks, but he always lost his profits by sinking them into ever-bigger schemes. And most damaging, Cole gambled heavily on sports. This addiction had begun at Ole Miss, where he and Waters had roomed together for three semesters. When Cole moved into the Kappa Alpha house and continued his partying and gambling, Waters stayed in the dorm. Only two things had allowed Cole to remain solvent through the years: a knack for buying existing oil wells and improving their efficiency by managing operations himself; and a partner who continued to find new oil, even in the worst of times. Thus, he was always after Waters to generate new prospective wells. As the attorney of the two, Cole handled the land work—leasing up the acreage where their wells would be drilled—but he saw his real job as sales. And a natural salesman without something to sell is a frustrated man.