To Live and Die In Dixie (13 page)

“Did I read something about your winning an award from the state?” I asked.

“Better,” he beamed. “We were one of President Bush's last Thousand Points of Light. We've got five houses in Cabbagetown, over near the old Fulton Bag plant, and three houses here in Inman Park. We've applied for a grant to expand the program this year and buy four more houses.”

“That's wonderful,” I said sincerely. “In my own neighborhood, homeless women and men wander the streets all the time. And Edna and I cook for a family shelter run by an Episcopalian church in Decatur.”

“You see,” Dahlberg said, his dark eyes shining with enthusiasm, “we do much more than a shelter ever could. By buying and rehabbing these houses we take derelict housing stock and make it a viable, attractive part of the community. Plus we make homeowners of the working poor.”

“How do your neighbors feel about your moving homeless people into Inman Park?” I asked. “These are some pretty pricey houses around here.”

He twirled his empty beer bottle between the palms of his hands. “Most people applaud what we're doing,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But yes, you're always going to hit the NIMBY effect.”

“NIMBY?” I said. “What's that?”

“It's an acronym for ‘not in my backyard,'” he said. “There are certain people around here who believe that only white, middle-class, heterosexual Protestants deserve to have a home in a nice neighborhood.”

“People like Elliot Littlefield?”

“What have you heard?” he said tensely. “What did he tell you?”

The ice was melting in my tea, leaving a pool of clear liquid on top of the amber tea.

“I've heard that he's organized the neighbors to try to stop you buying any more houses here. That he actually bought one vacant house for substantially more than it was worth just to keep your group from getting it. I also heard that you got your revenge by reporting him to the city zoning board over parking and fire regulations. I heard the feud between you has been going on for some time.”

“He told you that?”

“Some of it. I'm a detective, remember?”

Dahlberg got up and leaned against the porch railing. “This whole feud deal has been blown way out of proportion. Littlefield may have some hard feelings against me, and yes, I was upset about the flag thing, but I'm personally too busy to spend much time mounting a conspiracy against Elliot Littlefield.”

He turned and smiled, flashing beautiful, even white teeth. The Dahlbergs had spent lots of money on orthodontia.

“As long as you're in the neighborhood, why not stay and have dinner with me? I've got a couple salmon steaks in the fridge and a nice bottle of wine. What do you say? When Littlefield gets home, you can pop over there and see him, as you intended. Just don't tell him you had dinner with me.”

The offer was tempting. Lunch had been a long time ago, and it sounded like Edna wasn't planning to do any cooking with the air-conditioning on the fritz. Besides, this leafy front porch had a nice feel to it.

“Thanks, but no,” I said reluctantly. “I've been out all day and I've still got more work to do at home tonight.”

“You sure?”

I nodded yes. “Maybe another time?”

“For sure,” he said. “But would you have time to look at our Inman Park houses? I'm really proud of them. They're just right over on Gormley. It's only a five minute walk.”

I glanced at my watch. It was getting late. “Just a quick look.”

Even with ancient oaks shading the sidewalks as we walked, the heat was daunting. I was wilting fast, but Dahlberg, in his shorts and sandals, didn't seem to mind the heat. He was fresh as a daisy and talking a mile a minute about his project.

“We buy the houses with a revolving loan fund,” he was saying. “We're able to pay the small down payment ourselves, and with volunteer lawyers and brokers, the other fees are minimal. On the first house we let the tenants do the work themselves, but the quality of their work wasn't too good, so now we hire everything out.”

“How do you choose who gets a house?” I asked.

“We have three or four social service agencies who make recommendations. Then the tenants go through a rigorous screening process before we accept them into
the program. They have to be working, of course, or at least in an approved job-training program. We don't take substance abusers, or anyone with a recent felony arrest record. Family size is limited because of the size of the houses, and of course, we try to promote a good racial mix.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

“It sounds trivial,” Dahlberg said, “but we want our neighborhoods to be a real mix of rich and poor; black, white, and brown; single, married, what have you. If people like Littlefield had their way, only certified yupsters would live in Inman Park.”

“Yeah, yuppies,” I said, halfheartedly. I was hot and hungry and my feet hurt.

As we walked south toward Gormley, the lots got smaller and the houses humbler. Brick and stone gave way to asphalt shingles. We passed a somewhat rundown brick apartment building.

That's when I noticed an acrid, smoky smell to the air. Two houses down on my right sat the burned-out skeleton of a small house, the brick chimney poking precariously through what was left of the roof. The fire had happened fairly recently. There was shattered glass on the sidewalk, and on the singed patch of front yard rested a blackened iron bed frame and a half-melted child's plastic riding toy.

Dahlberg kept walking, looking straight ahead. Two houses down, he stopped in his tracks. A skinny brown-skinned woman sat on the brick stoop of a neat little green-painted bungalow. The paint was fresh and gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Two pots of bright red geraniums were set on either side of the door. The woman fanned herself and stared at us.

Dahlberg turned up the walkway to the house. “This is Valeria King, Callahan,” he announced. The woman
stood, straightening her cotton housedress. She folded her arms over her chest and gave a wary nod of her head as a sort of greeting. “Valeria was our first tenant,” he said. “She and her husband Juan are success stories. Juan is a shift supervisor over at the pie bakery, and Valeria works as an aide at a nursing home. Two years ago, they were living in Juan's car and their three children were in foster care.”

Valeria King's eyes swept over Dahlberg. “How you doin', Mr. D?” she called. He walked up to the edge of the stoop and sat down beside her.

“I'm just great,” he said. “How are you and Juan?”

She hugged herself tighter and I saw that her chin was quivering. “Well, tell the truth, I'm still mighty cut up 'bout Josephina and the baby. Mighty cut up. Can't stop thinkin' about that fire and her and the baby.”

Dahlberg put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her fiercely. “We're all upset about Josephina and little Maria,” he said soothingly. “I talked to Josephina's aunt on the phone today. Oscar is going to be released from Scottish Rite's burn unit next week. The skin grafts seem to be healing, and she's going to keep him until Josephina's mother can get here from San Antonio.”

He looked up at me sadly. “Valeria's best friend, Josephina Rosario, lived in that house we just passed. She was another of our tenants. She and the baby died in a fire Saturday night. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy. But somehow her four-year-old, Oscar, managed to get out alive. Josephina and Maria were asleep in a back bedroom, and they didn't make it out.”

“Burned alive,” whispered Valeria in a flat voice. “Those two sweet souls burned alive.” Her shoulders shuddered slightly with a suppressed sob.

Dahlberg grasped her hand in his. “I know,” he said
soothingly. “It is awful. But the fire marshal told me Josephina and the baby died of smoke inhalation before the fire got to them. They never felt the fire, Valeria.”

She shook her head and bit her lip. “Burned alive.”

He glanced up at me, and I saw anger in his face.

“I know she was your friend, Valeria, but Josephina had no business letting her boyfriend stay over here again. She knew the rules. The marshal said it looked like they'd been drinking, and Josephina might have dropped a cigarette on the couch or something. Either that, or Oscar might have been playing with matches on the couch. Once it started, the fire engulfed the house at an incredible speed. The entire house was in flames before the trucks got here. I could see the light from my house.”

Valeria's face was expressionless. “Josephina quit smoking. The doctor down to Grady said the smoke made the baby sick, so she quit.”

“Then it was Oscar playing with matches,” Dahlberg said firmly. “You've got kids, you know how they are, Valeria. At that age they're fascinated by fire.”

“I know,” she said slowly. “I just can't get around those precious souls burning up in that house. Her and that sweet baby.”

Dahlberg patted her shoulder one last time. “I'm sorry, Valeria,” he said. “You're still upset. We'll leave you alone to do your grieving.”

I followed him back to the sidewalk and we walked briskly past the house at 212 Gormley. This time there was no talk about the vibrancy of the neighborhood. “Goddamn boyfriend had no business staying in that house,” Dahlberg muttered. “She knew the rules.”

W
HEN I GOT HOME MY OWN house was blast-furnace hot and eerily quiet. Too quiet. It wasn't until I missed the reassuring hum of the central air-conditioning unit outside the kitchen window that I remembered Edna's remark about its being out of commission.

We'd fought for months over the decision to install central air, with Edna complaining that air-conditioned air gave her sinus headaches, but since the first August night we've had it, she's been addicted.

She'd clearly flown the coop in the face of the unrelenting heat of the house.

I kicked off my shoes, unbuttoned my sweat-drenched blouse, and opened the refrigerator door for a shot of deliciously chilled air. With my mother gone I felt no guilt about taking half a dozen gulps of cold, sweet iced tea out of the pitcher on the top shelf.

Reluctantly, I closed the refrigerator door and sat down to assess the situation. Even with the front and back doors wide open and the ceiling fans turned on high, the air in the house was depressingly warm and stale. How had we ever lived like this, I wondered.

Edna had left the newspaper on the kitchen table, and I leafed absentmindedly through it, halfway looking to see if there were any more stories about Elliot Littlefield, halfway trying to gather the energy to flee to cooler quarters.

Edna had probably gone over to her best friend Agnes's house. I myself could go to my brother's house, but Kevin and his wife have a new baby, not to mention their five-and six-year-olds, the ones even Edna calls the wombats. I'd get no peace and certainly no bed of my own, at Kevin's.

My friend Paula would have been happy to take me in. Her condo in Virginia Highland is only a couple miles away and I've crashed many a night on her sofa in the past. We could whip up a batch of margaritas and send out for a pizza with sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. The idea had its merits.

Then I had a better idea. Mac. I rarely spend the night at his house, mostly because he lives so far out in the country. It's nearly forty miles to Alpharetta where he lives, and besides, most of the restaurants we like to eat at, and the friends we socialize with, are closer to town. Besides, I suspect he secretly enjoys the comforts of my bungalow.

Not that his cabin is a shack or anything. He has all the basics, indoor plumbing, running water, heat, and air, but I'm the one with the queen-size orthopedic mattress and the home-baked biscuits on Saturday mornings.

I tried to remember what day it was, to see if Mac would be home. Since I'd started working this crazy case all the days seemed to run together. Mac's work with the Atlanta Regional Commission frequently kept him at city and county zoning meetings that ran late into the night. My eyes caught the date at the top of the
Constitution
. Tuesday. I decided to call and invite myself
over for the night. Maybe we could make up for the semifight we'd had. And I'd show him the article about tamoxifen. I'd kept the clipping in my pocket since I'd found it. I dug it out again and reread the article.

Which reminded me. I glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove. Nearly eight o'clock. Still, I grabbed the phone on the table and dialed my doctor's office. The story said only a few hundred women in Georgia would be accepted for the drug trial. I meant to be one of them, even if I got in at gunpoint.

Kappler's answering service girl promised to relay the message in the morning to have him call me. “Tell him it's vital,” I urged, knowing she'd do no such thing. That was another thing that pissed me off about Kappler. Sometimes he'd wait two or three days before returning my phone calls.

I held the receiver down and dialed Mac's number.

“Hello, big fella,” I said, breathing into the phone. “This is Sugar Cookie of Cookie's 'n' Nookie Escort Service calling to offer you a free in-home demonstration.”

“Is there an extra charge for the whipped cream and maraschino cherries?” he asked.

“Not if you supply your own.”

“I'll leave the porch light on,” he promised.

“Jack up the air-conditioning too,” I said, dropping the phony accent. “Ours is on the fritz and it's hotter than blue blazes over here. Edna blew the pop stand before I got home. If you'll invite me to spend the night I'll make it worth your while.”

“You got a deal,” he said. “I was just getting ready to light the grill. Stop at the store and get yourself a steak and a bottle of red wine. All I've got is that dark beer you hate.”

“I'm there,” I said.

I threw some clean clothes in an overnight bag, then I
grabbed a cold beer out of the fridge, held it to my neck for a minute, turned out the lights and locked up.

North Fulton County, where Mac lives, used to be considered rural. Now the intersection that used to hold Goolsby's gas station and general store has a strip shopping center with an all-night Kroger, a wine and cheese shop, and a hardware store so chic they do tennis racket restringing.

Local old-timers bitch and moan about creeping suburbanization, but most, like me, welcome the opportunity to shell out $4.99 a pound for a bacon-wrapped filet mignon, $3 for a loaf of fresh-baked French bread, and $11.99 for a decent bottle of wine. It beats the hell out of a can of Vienna sausage and a Yoo-Hoo.

From the shopping center it was still another fifteen minutes to the horse farm where he rents his cabin.

Mac's been there for three years, and he and his black Lab, Rufus, love the place. A caretaker lives in a small modern ranch house and looks after the horses, and Mac and Rufus fish on the small lake nearly every night in good weather.

The van bumped off the paved road and onto the gravel road to the horse farm, kicking up a cloud of fine red dust. Choking, I rolled up the window as fast as I could.

At the end of the road I could see the lights of the cabin, and as I got closer Rufus ran out and barked a happy greeting, running along beside the van and nipping at the tires.

Mac was on the back deck, dropping two foil-wrapped bundles on the glowing coals. I dropped my sack of groceries on the wooden picnic table and gave him a quick, grateful kiss. He grabbed me again and kissed me again, slowlike.

“How was your day?” he asked, when we parted for air.

“So-so,” I said. “Felt like a lot of wheel-spinning. I talked to a lot of people who told me a lot of nothing. How was your day?”

“Meetings,” he said simply. “Sit.” He picked up the bag of groceries and opened the door to the kitchen with his foot. “I thought we'd eat out here, unless you were serious about wanting the air-conditioning.”

The back deck was shaded by big oak and hickory trees, and the tree frogs and crickets were trying to outdo one another. Alpharetta may be only forty miles north of Atlanta, but it felt fifteen degrees cooler. “This is fine,” I called. “Crack open that wine and feed me a little something and you'll have a happy woman on your hands.”

Rufus loped onto the deck and licked my bare toes. I scratched his ear with my foot and he lay down with his head under my chair.

Mac emerged from the house with two water glasses of wine and two bowls of tossed salad cradled in his arms. He set the stuff down on the table then reached around and pulled bundles of napkin-wrapped cutlery from his shorts pocket.

“I'm buying you wine goblets for your birthday,” I said pointedly, taking a sip of the wine.

“Goblets, schmoblets,” he said, sitting opposite me. “Don't look a gift port in the storm in the mouth.”

“This ain't no port, this is Bordeaux,” I pointed out.

The wine was nice, the salad was cold, and the French bread was warm and crusty and dripping with real butter. We ate the steaks and potatoes slowly and I piled extra sour cream on my potato to console myself for having endured such a long, difficult day. I hadn't realized just how hungry I was until I pushed the last crust of bread around to mop up the last bit of steak juice.

“God, that was good,” I said meaningfully. “Thanks, Mac, I really needed this tonight.”

“Then I'm glad you called,” he said simply. “Any time.”

“Okay.”

“No, I mean it,” Mac said, suddenly serious. “I've been thinking about this off and on lately. What would you think about us living together?”

“I don't know,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “I haven't really thought about it. I guess I thought our current arrangement was working all right. Isn't it?”

He got up and started clearing dishes, scraping the plates a little harder than necessary, letting the knives and forks rattle loudly as he stacked the dishes and silver.

“I just thought we might want to come up with something a little more permanent, is all. Instead of all this running back and forth between your house and my house. You really haven't thought about it at all?”

I sighed. “I guess I've toyed with the idea. But I always push it to the back of my mind. The logistics are such a hassle. Do we live in my house or yours, or do we compromise and get a new place in between? And what about Edna? I can't just put her out on the street, Mac.”

Mac sat down and pushed his chair closer to mine. “I'm not asking you to. Edna and I get along great. It might look weird to some people, but I got no problem with her living with us. In fact, I always sort of assumed that would be the deal.”

He'd vaulted easily over the big obstacle I'd put in front of him. But I wasn't ready to articulate the real reason I kept avoiding a serious discussion of where our relationship was headed.

“Let's think about it, okay?” I said, reaching across
the table and holding his hand. “I do want to be with you, honest. But right now I just don't have the energy to get into this.”

“Well, think about it. That's all,” he said.

I got up to clear away the dinner plates, but he pulled me down into his lap. “What was that you said about a free in-home demonstration?” he muttered, nibbling my ear and sliding his hand up under my blouse.

I put my arms around his neck and tilted his head back for a long, searching kiss. The tensions of the day slowly ebbed away. Mac lowered his head and started kissing the vee between my breasts, unbuttoning my blouse as he went.

“Why don't we continue this in the house?” I suggested, looking uneasily around. The cabin seems miles from civilization, but in the wintertime, when the leaves are off the trees, you can see the caretaker's house from Mac's back deck. If I could see him, I reasoned, there was a chance he could see me. Mac and I had this discussion frequently. He's one of these macho guys who seem to get turned on by rolling around on pine cones under the stars. Me, I like a nice soft bed.

Mac laughed and kept unbuttoning. “Relax. The guy's at a horse show in Tennessee. Not even the horses are home to see us. What do you say to a little skinny dip?”

The back steps of the porch wind down a steep slope to a rock-covered patio and a swimming pool that looks like it was blasted out of the rock.

We left our clothes on the porch and ran butt-naked, down the steps, with Rufus barking joyously at our heels. He didn't know exactly what was going on, but he seemed to sense it was something fun.

Later on, when things got serious, we had to put Rufus outside. “He's only a puppy,” Mac explained. “I don't want him to know I let girls spend the night.”

We were both too keyed up to sleep much. When he got up to let Rufus back inside, I switched on the bedside lamp. “Sorry,” Mac said, getting back into bed. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

“You didn't. I don't know what's wrong with me tonight. Seems like a million things jumping around inside me. Not a very restful state of mind.”

“Tell me about the case,” he suggested. I propped my head up on my elbow and looked at him with surprise. “Really? I thought you thought I was stupid to take on Elliot Littlefield as a client.”

“I still do,” he said, wrapping one of my curls around his finger. “But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in how things are progressing.”

“It's not going so hot,” I admitted. I outlined my conversations with Shane Dunstan and P. G. T. Vickers.

“I hadn't realized Vickers was that crazy,” Mac said. “I've got a couple Rebel Yell books in the den. Think I should burn 'em?”

“You're kidding,” I said, appalled.

“I'm kidding. Those are expensive books.”

“The thing that bugs me,” I told him, “is that I can't figure why Vickers would have stolen the diary. He could easily afford to outbid anybody else, from what he says. I just can't picture him stabbing and clubbing somebody like Bridget to death. But he's hiding something. He told me he was at some library dedication all afternoon, but his secretary told me he left early to go to Atlanta. There's something weird going on with him.”

“I thought you were only supposed to recover the diary,” Mac said.

“Look,” I said. “I've tried, but there's no way I can separate the diary and Bridget's murder. Did I tell you she was sleeping with her high school soccer coach?
She ran away from home when she thought she was pregnant with his child, but it was a false alarm.”

“Do you think the coach killed her?”

“Maybe,” I said. “He claims he was at his summer soccer camp when the house was broken into. But then he also claims he only slept with Bridget once, and I know that's a lie.”

“How?”

“I just do,” I said stubbornly.

“What about Littlefield?” Mac asked. “Was he sleeping with her?”

“He says not, and about that I think he's telling the truth.”

“Why?”

“Not because Littlefield didn't want to,” I said. “Those old newspaper clippings said he was notorious for preferring nubile young things. And Littlefield definitely killed Sunny. I know that for a fact. It's just that I think Bridget thought she was in love with Kyle Jordan—that's the coach's name. I've been talking to Bridget's sister, Jocelyn. Bridget was a virgin before Jordan. I think she was too hung up on him to be sleeping around with two different guys. She thought Jordan was going to leave his wife and marry her.”