Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (8 page)

He smiled. “I’m a little old-fashioned. Be right back.”

* * *

“So you’re not from Macon?” she asked again
when they settled in with their sandwiches.

“No
.” H
e shook open his napkin. “Actually, I’m in town on sort of a research trip.”

“Research?”

“I’m on a leave of absence from a very small newspaper you never heard of. Sounds sort of self-important so I don’t usually tell anybody but seeing as how you’re a f
an of fine literature,
I’ll tell you
anyway. I’m working on—trying to work on—my
first novel.”

“
Really?
Here?”

“Yes, here. To be honest, I put my finger on a map of the south and it landed closer to here than anywhere else.”

Ria laughed. “You
’re
joking?”

“No. And you?”

“I’m an attorney.”

“Now you
’re
joking.”

“No. Male chauvinism much?”

“None at all. You just look too young to be an established attorney.”

“I said attorney, I didn’t say established. Actually, I’ve been practicing a little over two years and a couple of months ago
I went out on my own with a
friend of mine.
It
’s our office and
home, we
redid
the second floor
into
two
apartments.
The first floor is
Bishop & Knight, Attorneys at Law.”

“You didn’t get top billing?”

“Always start with the name that goes first in the phone book. Sound business practice. Johnny says we should have made up a silent partner. Aabco, Bishop & Knight. So folks thumbing through the phone book see our name first.”

H
e
laughed just like
Paul Devlin
laughed.
Coincidence. Nothing else. Or maybe his people came from Macon after all and he just didn’t know it. Maybe he was a Devlin descendant.
She’d always heard
everyone had a double
.

“Johnny? Your partner’s not another lady lawyer, then?”

“Not hardly. We go back a long way
, friends from the cradle. O
ur mothers
are best friends, we were sort of automatic brother and sister.
”

Ria caught the glint of metal on his finger. His wedding ring finger. She put down the potato chip in her hand and stood up, calling herself a first-class idiot,
letting her
self
get
picked up by a married man in a bookstore just because he looked and sounded like her Paul
.

“
Thank you for the book, Mr. Everett. And for dinner.”

“Bu
t you haven’t finished! What—”

“And do be sure to give my regards to your wife. I hope she knows what a charming husband she has.”

He glanced down at his hand.

“Oh, hell! Look, please sit down. My wife died several years ago. I’ve just never met anyone who ever gave me a reason to want to take her ring off.”

Ria searched his face. Her radar wasn’t usually wrong
but it wasn’t infallible either.

“That’s a really shitty thing to say if it isn’t true,” Ria said, still standing.

“
The pits. Lowest of the low. But it’s true.
”

Ria sat back down. “Then I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

“You believe me?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Does that prove I’m a gullible fool?
”

“It
proves you’re a remarkable
judge of character. Th
ough of course, I’m sure—”

“
That’s what
Jack the Ripper would say, too.”

“Exactly,” he said, and laughed.

“What newspaper do you work for that I’ve never heard of?”

“Mobile Reporter.”

“Alabama boy.”

“Guilty.”

“What’s your book about? Or do you talk about it?
Mobile’s full of history.
Just as Southern as Macon, too, and a port city to boot.
Why not stay there?”

“Too much chance of gettin’ accused of airing other folks’ dirty laundry.
You know how people are, they’d swear and be damned I was malignin’ family history. It’s sort of an overlay of the past on the present.
Or the present over the past.
That type of thing. I’m researching Macon in the late 1800s right now.”

“Our house was built then.”

“Really?”

“Yes, 1883 I think was the date of the first deed.”

“I’m sure it’s beautiful.”

“It is now. Looked like hell when we started.”

“Macon’s a great setting for that type of plot, you know. It’s taken good care of so many of the older houses
. And so much of downtown—some
of the buildings still have the
same
use, did you know?”

“I know in general, but not really in specifics. Are you getting that deep with your research?”

“Oh, yes. I found some old maps. A lot of the old stores and government buildings, the firehouses. The churches, of course, the older residential sections.
Those old downtown buildings—if
they could only talk!”

Ria laughed. She wondered what he’d say if he knew hers did talk.
Or a
t least it did to her.

“What?”

“Oh, just thinking.”

“About?”

“That you should show me instead of tell me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Show me.
Your Macon.
The Macon of your book.”
She stood up.
“You through eatin’?
Then let’s ride downtown.
Show me what it used to be.”

He stared.
“This is probably cutting my own throat, but you did just meet me, you know.”

“I had dinner with you.”

“In the
m
all.
In a crowd.”

Ria shrugged.
“You told me you were perfectly safe.”
She’d lost her mind, no doubt about it.
But she
’d
eaten dinner with Paul Devlin’s double.
A double who claimed to know all about Paul Devlin’s Macon.

“Well, to tell the truth, I left my car up at the Auto Service Center for an oil change, thought I’d stroll the
m
all and get some errands out of the way, told them just to leave it out front when they closed.”

“My car’s sitting right in the parking lot.
I’ll bring you back.”

He hesitated.
Then he stood suddenly and picked up the trash.

“You live downtown, you’ll have to come all the way back out.”

“I don’t mind.
I like Macon at night.”

Chapter
Ten

She waited for his reaction when he saw her car.
She loved her car.
And hadn’t
m
et a man yet who didn’t want to date her for it.

“Wheee!” He gave a low whistle under his breath.
“I thought you said you weren’t an established attorney?”

“I’m not.”

“Then you’re independently wealthy.”

“Not hardly.
It’s a classic, alright, but not a really out-of-sight classic like a ‘56 T-Bird or a Shelby.”

“Still.”
Paul walked around it, stroking the finish of the ’65 Mustang convertible
.
Candy
a
pple
r
ed
,
black top and black interior.
“It’s beautiful.”

“And it cost all of $2,000 or so, brand-new,” said Ria, unlocking the doors.
“Plus I think it’s had four transmissions and three new motors, and the upholstery and top were replaced about six years ago.
Daddy
redid it one more time
and
gave it to me when I graduated from high school.
He bought it new right off the floor so it’s a one, well, two-owner car.”

They settled in.
Ria turned the key and grinned.
“Let’s cruise. We’ll hit the interstate and get off at Hardeman Avenue and go down through the historic district, down Coleman Hill, and take Mulberry through Macon.”

“You’re driving.”
He settled back.
When was the last time he’d been this attracted to a woman?
He didn’t remember.
Then again
,
he didn’t socialize much.

“And no cracks about my driving,” Ria warned with mock sternness.

“Not a one.”

She navigated the winding circular mini-roads of the
m
all to reach the pullout onto Bloomfield, turned right down Mercer University Drive
and
onto the I-75
entrance
. She took the Hardeman Avenue exit
and ran down to the light at the corner of Hardeman and College
, then
turned left and drove slowly past the old houses lin
ing
this portion of College Street.
Old mansions and mini-mansions stood, tall and stately.
Most were renovated private homes or home-apartment combinations.
Light spilled invitingly from the windows.
She headed down Coleman Hill
.

Paul gestured out the window.
“Lots of these were here in the 1880s”, he said, indicating huge Victorians and classic white-columned mansions.
“The smaller ones weren’t, they were built in the early 1900s.”

On the right, the Hay House, a State historic trust, presided in Italian Renaissance splendor over the corner of Georgia Avenue and Spring Street.
“The Hay House.
That was the Johnston house originally, you know.
They were—that is
, I imagine they must have been so proud of it.”

“Had to have been.
You caught one of the tours yet?
The inside of that place
is
unbelievable!
Can’t write about old Macon if you haven’t seen it.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen it.
Know it well.”

The city lights spread before them, sparkling like jewels. They ran down the double lanes of Mulberry Street, where inbound and outbound traffic
were
split by large islands of grassed park, with huge old Japanese magnolia trees and thickly massed azaleas.

“Mulberry Street Methodist and First Presbyterian,”
Paul said with pleasure, eyeing the old landmarks.
“Think of the joys and sorrows those walls have seen.”

“Makes you feel your mortality, doesn’t it?”
She continued to drive at a leisurely pace.

“Sol Hogue’s Drug Store!” Paul exclaimed suddenly, pointing to the rows of multi-paned bay windows of a two-story edifice on the corner of Mulberry and Cotton, its complicated trim and scroll work now painstakingly painted in the deep antique green and royal purple signature colors of Lawrence Mayer’s Florist.
“Don’t you just love all that complicated glass and scroll work?”

“Is that what it was then?”

“A drug store, yes.
And
I believe it was still a drug store well up into the
1980s
or early 90s.
”

Ria laughed.
“I’d almost forgotten.
Young’s Drugs.
With an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor bar where they made real milkshakes at the counter. Daddy used to bring me to town on Saturday just for those.
Thanks for the memory.”

They moved on through the light at Mulberry and Second.

“That was the Gas Light and Water Company,” he said, pointing to the old buildings, now re-born as restaurants, printing shops, antique stores.
“That was a lawyer’s office, M. G. Baynes, I believe I recall.
And that was a dentist, Dr. Barfield.
And that,” he said as he pointed, “was Berry & Flynn Tobacco Shop.
They had a cherry blend that beat anything in London.”

“How do you know that?” Ria asked.
“Wouldn’t think the records’d go that far.”

“Well, they claimed they did.
Ran across some of their advertisements in the old newspapers.
Had a high opinion of themselves.
Ah!
The new Government Building!” he exclaimed, as they moved into the next block. “Which of course you know as the Federal Courthouse, though it’s not the same building, just the same spot.
That was Kuhn’s.
Guns and knives and fishing tackle
.
”