The Fixer Upper (10 page)

“Not to add to your worries,” Tee said, “but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need a roofer and a carpenter too. When I was driving down your street the other day at dusk, I happened to look up. There were bats flying into holes up under the eaves on the side of the house.”

“Bats!” I shivered. “I guess I won’t be exploring the attic anytime soon.”

“I’ll give you the name of our exterminator,” Carter said reassuringly. “And you probably need to meet Bobby Livesey. Actually, Bobby can take care of pretty much anything that needs doing over there. He’s as honest as the day is long.”

“Good idea,” Tee said. “I didn’t think about Bobby.”

“I’ll have to talk to Mitch before I commit to spending that kind of money,” I said warily. “Guess we’ll have to come up with some kind of budget for the project.” I put a hand over my mouth to cover the yawn I’d been trying hard to suppress. “So much for slapping a coat of paint on the place and hanging up the For Sale sign.”

W
hen we got in the Prius to go home, Tee turned the car in the opposite direction from the way we’d come to his house. “Is this a shortcut I need to know about?” I asked.

“Nope.” He kept driving.

“Part two of the Tee Berryhill tour of Guthrie?”

“You could say that.”

At the four lane, Tee headed east. When we whizzed past the Guthrie city limits sign, I began to feel a little alarmed. As far as I could tell, there was nothing on either side of the road except for pastureland or woods. All was darkness.

“You want to tell me where we’re going?” I asked.

He turned on the radio and fiddled with the controls until he found a station he liked. Country. I should have known.

“You think I’m taking you across the county line for immoral purposes?”

“Are you?”

“Nope.”

After another five miles or so, signs of life started to appear. We passed an all-night gas station, a used-car lot, and a small strip-mall shopping center. Finally, a street sign told me we were entering Griffin city limits.

At the first traffic signal, Tee turned left, and into the parking lot of a brightly lit restaurant called the Burger Chef. The parking lot was full, and teenagers lounged around at picnic tables in front of the entry-way.

“We’re here,” he announced, parking the car.

“The question is, why are we here?”

“To eat,” he said, getting out and coming around to let me out of the car.

“But we just had dinner back at your house,” I said.

“You’re not hungry?” He raised one eyebrow.

“Okay. Yeah. I’m a little hungry.”

He steered me into the restaurant, which looked like something out of a rerun of
Happy Days
. The place was all chrome and Formica, with half the restaurant given over to booths with red leatherette seating, the other half to a long counter where every stool was occupied.

It smelled like hot grease and chocolate cake. My stomach growled in appreciation.

We took a seat in a booth near the front window. He handed me a huge laminated menu.

“You do eat meat, right?”

“Of course,” I said, hungrily scanning the offerings.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tee said. “Dad’s a great guy. He’s an excellent litigator, plays scratch golf, is widely read on any number of subjects, including history and philosophy. But his cooking sucks, as you’ve just seen. I couldn’t help but notice that you managed to hide most of your salmon in your dinner napkin.”

I blushed to the roots of my hair. “Was I that obvious?”

“Only to me,” Tee said. “Dad truly believes he’s a great chef. He’s always oblivious to the fact that our dinner guests only pick at his salmon, which I cannot convince him not to keep making. Hence, our trip to Burger Chef. We roll up the streets at eight
P.M.
in Guthrie on weeknights. It was either this or the Canton Buffet out on the county highway.”

“This’ll do,” I said quickly.

He nodded and closed his menu. “So. Burgers or chicken fingers?”

“Burgers.”

“French fries or onion rings?”

“French fries.”

“Chocolate shake or malted milk?”

I hesitated.

“Don’t tell me you’re watching your weight,” he said.

“That’s not it. I like ’em both, but I haven’t had a malted milk in years.”

“I recommend the shakes. They rock.”

The waitress came over, took our orders, which were identical, and left.

He folded his arms on the table and smiled enigmatically.

“What?”

“I’m trying to figure out a way to tactfully ask you what the hell you’re doing in Guthrie, Georgia.”

“You already know the answer to that. My father inherited Birdsong. He sent me down here to get it fixed up and ready to put on the market.”

“You’re a lobbyist with one of the biggest law firms in D.C. Your boss has been implicated in a public-corruption case involving the alleged bribery of an influential congressman,” Tee said.

My face fell. “Who have you been talking to?” I whispered.

“We do get CNN down here,” Tee said matter-of-factly. “Plus, I Googled you. And then I ran a Nexis search. I found out you’d left Hodder and Associates. The blurb I read said you’d left ‘to pursue new interests.’”

“I was fired,” I said flatly. “You want to know the rest?”

“If you feel like telling it. I told you I was trying to be tactful.”

“You’re not very good at tactful, are you?”

“I’ve been told I’m a straight shooter.”

“That’s one way to put it. Okay. Since you asked so nicely. After I was fired from Hodder and Associates, it was clear that no other firm in town would hire me until this thing with Alex is settled. I couldn’t afford to pay my share of the rent on the apartment I shared with two other girls. My father has remarried and doesn’t need any more complications in his life. My mother lives in California and makes jewelry out of smashed-up headlights and I really don’t care for her boyfriend. So that’s what the hell I’m doing in a place like Guthrie.”

“Alex?”

“Alexander Hodder. My boss. I’m…that is, I was, sort of his protégée. So, to an outsider, it might look as though I’m involved in this mess. But
I’m not. Not really. I mean, yes, I made the arrangements for the senator to hire that wakeboard instructor, and for him to get a massage, but I totally had no idea that anything, you know, fishy, was going on.”

Tee nodded. “And was anything fishy going on?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Okay, well, in hindsight, it has since dawned on me that a sixty-something-year-old with two knee replacements might not have been entirely interested in taking up wakeboarding. Or that the massage the congressman wanted was not therapeutic. I was naive.”

He tapped his fingertips on the tabletop.

I sighed. “Okay. I was incredibly stupid. But that doesn’t automatically mean I’m a criminal.”

“Hopefully not,” Tee said. “What does your lawyer say?”

I looked away.

“You don’t have a lawyer?” He looked incredulous.

“Do you know what a criminal-defense attorney in D.C. charges? My dad has offered, but I haven’t been charged with anything. Anyway, I was afraid if I hired a lawyer, it would look like I’d done something wrong. And I haven’t. Not deliberately. I’m a policy wonk,” I said, feeling my lower lip start to tremble. “Not a pimp.”

He smiled. Tee Berryhill had very nice eyes. Kind eyes. With very long curly lashes. “What does this Alex guy say? Does he think you need a lawyer?”

Unbidden, tears started to well in my eyes.

Just then, the waitress arrived at our table. She set my cheeseburger platter, all the way, down in front of me. I picked up a French fry and dabbed it in the little white paper cup of ketchup, and took a bite, and burned the devil out of my tongue.

I gasped and reached for my milk shake. Tears streamed down my face.

“Hey!” Tee said. “Are you all right?”

I sucked a mouthful of cold chocolate and let it sit on my blistered tongue. I nodded miserably. “Burned my tongue.”

He busied himself arranging the lettuce, tomatoes, and purple onion rings just so on top of his hamburger patty. He splurted mustard and ketchup generously on top of the bun, closed the sandwich and took a
bite. He chewed energetically. Swallowed. Took a sip of his own milk shake.

“This Alex guy,” he said finally. He paused and ate a French fry. “I guess it would be pretty tactless of me to ask if you were sleeping with him?”

“I wasn’t!” I blurted out. “He’s married. I’m not that kind of person.”

“I didn’t think so,” Tee said. “I mean, you don’t strike me as someone who would, uh, well, anyway, that was a bad question. Forget I asked.”

I took a bite of my own cheeseburger. It was delicious. But now my tongue was starting to throb. I took a long sip of the milk shake.

Tee ate and I sipped. People ebbed and flowed around us. Somebody put some money in the jukebox. Country music. God, hadn’t they heard of rock and roll out in the boonies?

My shoulders were starting to throb. My back ached and my calf muscles were screaming. I was suddenly drained of energy.

Tee finished his burger, signaled for the check, and paid for both our dinners. I didn’t even bother to offer to pay for mine.

He turned the radio off, and we rode in silence for a while.

“Since we’re asking personal questions,” I said. “What was that thing your dad said at dinner? About it being a waste of billable hours running a small-town newspaper?”

“Oh that. It’s just his way of needling me about the
Citizen-Advocate
.”

“That’s a newspaper?”

“The
Guthrie Citizen-Advocate
. It’s a weekly. Founded in 1908. Which we now happen to own, and which I now happen to be the publisher of. It pisses Dad off mightily.”

“Why would you guys buy a paper if your dad doesn’t want you to run it?”

“We didn’t exactly buy it,” Tee said with a chuckle. “We represented the wife of the former owner in her lengthy and highly entertaining divorce. Hammond, that’s the guy who owned the paper, decided to get foxy and try to hide assets from Veronica, who was our client. It took us nearly two years to run him to ground, but we eventually did it. Luckily for us, the divorce judge had just been elected in our circuit, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about Hammond’s social standing. He was very annoyed
that Hammond tried to hide a couple million dollars’ worth of marital assets. So he awarded half the assets, including the
Citizen-Advocate
, to Veronica. Who, when it came time to pay our legal bills, balked at all the hours we’d worked on her behalf. We took it to arbitration, but long story short, the Berryhill law firm is now the owner of the
Guthrie Citizen-Advocate
. And you are looking at the publisher of record.”

He grinned.

“You look pretty pleased with yourself,” I observed. “Even if it does annoy your father. Do you actually know anything about running a newspaper?”

“I’m learning. We took over about eight months ago. It wasn’t much of a paper, to tell you the truth. What people in the business call ‘a shopper.’ Which means most of the revenue—and content—was generated by advertising. It helped that we were the legal organ for the county, so we’re guaranteed all the legal advertising.”

“It makes money?”

“Not a lot,” he admitted. “I’ve hired a new editor, who is also the sole reporter, and we’ve got a new sales staff—actually, the sales staff consists of Sally, who I hired away from a weekly down in Perry, Georgia. They’re young, and enthusiastic. And don’t tell anybody, but I’m having a ball. I’ve even written some editorials. Running a small-town newspaper is way more fun than doing trusts and estates.”

“If you say so,” I said, shaking my head.

“Dad thinks the paper is a total waste of my time, and the firm’s resources,” Tee said.

“I’ve heard that line before,” I told him. “My dad never could understand why I went to all the trouble of going to law school, and then went to work as a lobbyist. He’s just dying for me to cross over to the dark side and sue somebody.”

Tee laughed out loud. “The dark side. Yeah. That’s a good one. The dark side.” He chortled, and I giggled, and pretty soon we were riding along in the night, laughing our collective butts off.

We were still laughing when we pulled up in front of Birdsong. I could see a single light burning in an upstairs window. Ella Kate’s room. The porch light was off. I’d deliberately turned it on before leaving a
few hours earlier, so I wouldn’t have to navigate the perilously cracked driveway in the dark.

Tee saw me looking at the front of the house. “I’ll walk you to the door. You should get that front-porch light fixed.”

“It works just fine,” I told him. “I think Ella Kate turned it off on purpose.”

“Old bat,” he muttered.

He trained a penlight on the ground and we picked our way slowly up the cracked and broken pavement.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said, when we’d reached the front porch. “Both of ’em. I can make it from here.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” I said, feeling awkward. I was too tired to invite him in, and anyway, I didn’t want him getting any ideas.

“Okay, then. Well, good night,” he said.

He was a couple of steps down the driveway when I called out impulsively.

“Hey, Tee?”

“Yeah?” It was so dark I couldn’t see his face, which was a good thing.

“You know how I told you I wasn’t sleeping with Alex? The thing is, he never asked. We were probably working up to it though. There was definitely something there. I’d be lying if I denied it.”

“Oh.” His voice was soft, disembodied sounding.

“He won’t return my calls,” I said. “I even went to his house. His wife wouldn’t let me in.”

“Dempsey?” He was walking back toward me again, but stopped when he was two feet away. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess…you seem like somebody I don’t want to lie to. And you said I don’t strike you as being that type of girl. But the thing is, I probably am that type of girl.”

He shook his head. “No you’re not.” His face was pale and serious. I heard a soft hoot coming from the top of the camellia bush at the edge of the driveway, and then the fluttering of wings. Tee turned and walked away.