Closer than the Bones (18 page)

“What did you do?” I figured there were probably aspects of the story she had edited out, to present herself in the most favorable light, but I had no way of knowing for certain.

“At first I was so flabbergasted I didn’t know what to do or what to say.” Her hand trembled as she touched her fingers to her lips in a gesture of distress. She drew a deep breath, and her hand fluttered back down to her lap. “Then I got mad. I used language that probably had my mother rolling in her grave, but I told her to get the hell out of my house. I also told her I was going to call Mary Tucker and a couple of the other people I knew who had befriended her, like Russell and Alice, and tell them how she’d repaid my kindnesses to her. I’d see to it, I said, that she never got another handout from anyone who could help her career.”

“Did that rattle her?”

“You bet your grits it did!” Her smile indicated her feelings of vindictive triumph. “She couldn’t start backpedaling fast enough, but by then it was too late. She didn’t expect me to fight back, and when I did, she had sense enough to back down. But it was too late,” she repeated. “I wanted her out of my house, and she was gone within the hour.”

“And she never made good on her threats?” If Sukey Lytton was as vicious as Lurleen Landry claimed, she must have somehow tried to get back at her erstwhile mentor.

“I heard the odd bit of gossip, relayed back to me by very well-meaning friends.” She grimaced, and I understood just what kind of “friends” she was talking about, the kind who can’t wait to see your reaction to something nasty or ugly. Not that they believe it themselves, of course.

“But essentially nothing really came of it,” I said.

“No,” Lurleen said, almost with reluctance. “She really wasn’t in a position to do much. I went ahead and called Mary Tucker anyway, so she’d know what was going on. She promised to talk to Sukey, and she must have, because the next time I saw the girl, she acted like nothing had ever happened. She even had the nerve to thank me for my hospitality and tell me, in public, how sorry she was she’d had to leave when she did, although I had practically begged her to stay!”

“I can certainly understand your feelings of outrage,” I said. I was also very curious to know what Sukey’s side of the story had been, although her version might have been unreliable. She sounded completely self-serving. “But that was all over and done with, wasn’t it? Surely you didn’t have anything more to worry about?” I wasn’t as naive as I sounded, but I wanted to hear her explanation.

“I thought so, myself, but when I heard about that damn manuscript of hers yesterday, I just about had a heart attack! I’m terrified of what she might have written. And if it appears in print, she could have the last laugh after all.” Lurleen looked as if she might start crying again.

“If the manuscript doesn’t turn up, I don’t think you’ll have much to worry about,” I said.

“That’s a big if,” she said. “How could it just vanish? Unless someone shredded it or burned it.” Her eyes lit up with hope at the thought. “That would be wonderful.”

“It could still turn up,” I told her, though I didn’t intend to be deliberately cruel. The light in her eyes died, and she slumped back in the chair.

“Yes,” she said, “and that’s why it’s important that your Mr. Preston doesn’t assume the worst of me, if he reads it.”

I didn’t correct her by asserting that he wasn’t my Mr. Preston, but I did try to point out the gaps in her thinking. “You’re forgetting something. You probably aren’t the only one who might have been maligned by that manuscript.”

“That's true,” she said slowly. “The others have as much, if not more, to lose if it should be found and published.”

“Like what?” I asked, though I doubted she would answer.

“I really couldn’t say,” she replied, standing up. “I won’t carry tales.” She had withdrawn from me, just that quickly, and I knew it wouldn’t do any good to press. She might already have begun to regret telling me what she had, though she would have to talk to Jack if the manuscript ever reappeared. If it existed in the first place!

I admired her for her refusal to gossip, even though it was frustrating. I got to my feet and stared down into her face. “I don’t know whether you want my advice on this, but if I were you, I’d tell all this to Jack Preston as soon as you have the chance to talk to him. Like I said before, he’s intelligent and fair-minded, and he will treat what you have to say appropriately. I have every faith in that.”

Thank you,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” She moved past me and headed for the door.

“Before you go,” I said, recalling what I had overheard between her and Miss McElroy just before I met her for the first time, “I have a question for you. About something else.”

She paused, her hand on the doorknob. “What is it?”

There was no point in trying to appear disingenuous. “The day I arrived, I overheard the last part of your conversation with Miss McElroy.”

Her face turned to stone. “What about it?”

“It sounded to me like you were threatening Miss McElroy.”

She frowned at me. “Just a difference of opinion, that was all. About something that has nothing to do with what’s going on here.”

“Are you entirely certain of that?”

“Yes, I am! If you must know, I had recommended someone for one of the scholarships that Mary Tucker sponsors at Ole Miss. She has someone else in mind. Someone I don’t think is as qualified or deserving, frankly. But she has the final say. Not me.”

“It still sounded like you were threatening her.”

“You can interpret it any way you like.” With that, she opened the door and stalked out. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t slam it behind her.

I guess if I wanted to know any more about it, I’d have to ask Miss McElroy herself. I wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the murders, but I’d have to follow it up at some point.

Dismissing that for the moment, I speculated instead on Lurleen Landry’s motives for seeking me out and confiding in me. She had made a point of referring to our mutual unmarried state. Had she been expecting me to say, “Honey, it’s okay, I’m a lesbian, too, and I understand completely?” She is a few years older than I am, and I could understand her reluctance to be open about her sexuality, if she were indeed a lesbian. Women of our generation and upbringing often find it difficult to be open about such matters. I was unmarried, largely by choice, though I enjoyed the company of men and could even boast, discreetly, of a couple of mutually satisfactory love affairs over the years. I pitied her inability to say and be who she was openly, and I despised the way the world around us would react if she did, at this time in her life.

I told myself that I might be reading way too much into her words and her actions, but she reminded me of others I had known in the past, deeply closeted and unable to come to terms with their sexuality. I only hoped she would feel comfortable in confiding in Jack, if the need arose.

I wasn’t eager to play the role of confessor again, yet I realized that, before this investigation had run its course, I would know more than I really wanted to about the lives of the people involved. Though I find people in general enormously interesting, I’m not prurient or prying by nature, though it might appear so.

I had a job to do, and my employer expected me to do some poking and prying.
Best get on with it,
I told myself. Before I went any further, I needed to finish reading through the pile of documents that Farrah Lockett had compiled for me.

Somewhere in all those pages, among the many details of the lives of Miss McElroy’s current guests and the two murder victims, there might lie the one bit of information which could help unlock the whole puzzle.

I went to the desk and opened the drawer where I had placed the folder of papers. Retrieving them, I made myself comfortable in the armchair and began to read. Five minutes into reading, I realized I needed something on which to make notes, so I found my handbag and pulled out a small notebook and a pen. Thus armed, I bent once again to my task.

Nearly two hours later, I had a headache and about three pages of scribbled notes and questions. I put the last page aside and leaned back in the armchair. My neck and shoulder muscles were tensed up, and I made an effort to relax them. I rolled my head around several times, each direction, then I flexed my shoulders up and down a few times, until the muscles began to loosen a bit.

Farrah had done an amazing job of collecting information for me in a very short period of time. She had even found a copy of an article from the local paper, reporting on the wedding of Miss Mary Tucker McElroy, forty-eight years ago, to Mr. Morwell Martin Phillips. There was a grainy picture of the bride and groom, both looking imposing but stiff in their wedding regalia. Even in the badly reproduced copy I held in my hands, Miss McElroy at thirty had that same air of regal command I had come to know in the last few days.

I studied the likeness of Morwell Phillips with great interest. For one thing, I hadn’t realized that he was nearly ten years younger than his wife. He had just turned twenty-one when they married. From his appearance now, I had assumed he was a few years older than Miss McElroy, but obviously the years had not worn well on him. In the photograph he was robust, even verging on the pudgy, with a fleshily handsome face. It was hard to associate the gaunt visage and frail frame I knew with this strapping young buck who looked ready to burst out of his formalwear.

According to the newspaper article, the bride and groom were going to honeymoon in Europe for two months, before they returned home to Idlewild. The groom would then take up his place as a student at Ole Miss law school while the bride continued her charitable works and her involvement in various literary activities around the South. Little was said about the bridegroom’s antecedents, though there was a brief mention of his parents. Since no occupation was mentioned, I figured that Phillips Senior had the kind of job that was beneath notice, at least in the society pages.

Other articles in the stack chronicled Miss McElroy’s rise to fame as a hostess and patroness of the literary arts, while little was said of her husband’s legal career. He was mentioned here and there as an adjunct to his wife, but he seemed never to have had much employment as a lawyer, other than looking after his wife’s estate.

Then, about fifteen years ago, he had begun teaching at the law school at his alma mater. For eight years he was the McElroy Professor of Law at Ole Miss, then he retired. A brief career, it seemed. For the most part, he apparently went through life in his wife’s shadow.

Interesting, I supposed, as a bit of insight into the life of my employer, but not much use that I could see in the present situation.

I had found more potentially useful information in the clutch of articles Farrah had gathered on Russell and Alice Bertram. One of the bits of information I had gleaned was that Russell had endowed a scholarship at Ole Miss for creative writing students. One of the recipients of this scholarship had been Sukey Lytton. I had found the connection by cross-checking the information which Farrah had compiled on Sukey: the scholarship was mentioned in one of the articles on her from a southern literary magazine.

The connection was interesting, because apparently Russell Bertram was actively involved in the scholarship process. According to the information Farrah had found, he was part of the committee which each year read the applicants’ work and then interviewed the short list of candidates. Thus he and Sukey Lytton had met while she was still a student at Ole Miss. He would have met her again as a protegee of Miss McElroy’s a few years later, but the fact that he had known her earlier could be significant. Was he the one who had introduced her to Miss McElroy? I’d have to remember to ask her at some point.

I had already heard from Brett Doran and Lurleen Landry the stories of their own connections to, and problems with, Sukey Lytton. I found nothing more in the stack of papers now resting in my lap to add to that.

The other information that I had learned was that each of them also had a connection to Hamilton Packer. He had never been Lurleen’s agent; but at one time, he had served in that capacity for both Brett Doran and Russell Bertram. Lurleen had obviously known him through her connection to Miss McElroy, and perhaps in the general way that a bestselling author might know a high-profile, successful agent. There was no other connection between the two of them that I could discern at the moment.

The key to it all seemed to me to be the murder of Sukey Lytton. If I could determine which of them had the most compelling motive to kill her, then the rest should fall into place. I was assuming, of course, that the murder of Hamilton Packer was a corollary to the first murder. If not for the alleged manuscript of Sukey Lytton’s, then Hamilton Packer might still be alive and breathing and polluting the atmosphere with his fetid-smelling self.

Hoisting myself up out of the chair, I placed the papers back in the desk drawer. I stretched some more, relieving the tension in my back and neck further while I thought about what to do next. My next move, I figured, would be to try to talk to Russell Bertram alone. Thus far I hadn’t seen him without his wife somewhere nearby, but at some point, the two had to spend time apart.

I glanced at my watch. Nearly four o’clock. I bent over the desk and looked out the window, toward the summerhouse. I couldn’t tell whether it was occupied at the moment. The encroaching afternoon shadows from the trees around it had obscured the porch and the front windows from view.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’d go down to the summerhouse and see if Brett might still be there. If so, I’d get him to find Russell Bertram for me and bring him to the summerhouse so I could talk to him there, away from the baleful influence of his wife.

I slipped down the back stairs without encountering anyone and stepped out onto the back verandah. The moist heat enveloped me, and I could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. Watching the sky for a moment, I could see some dark clouds moving in from the south-southwest. We might have more rainfall before too much longer. This morning’s downpour hadn’t lasted very long. The atmosphere was oppressive enough to foretell a good thunderstorm.