First Kill All the Lawyers (6 page)

“Because she didn’t have a husband anymore who was part of the group.”

“So she’d lost her passport.”

Liza nodded.

“And no one offered to fix her up with another man?”

“They were too afraid she was going to steal one of theirs.”

“What about someone new, from the outside?” Sam knew the answer to that, too. There was no new blood in the old circle. You could buy yourself the biggest house in Atlanta with new money, but that wouldn’t get you into the club.

Liza gave her an incredulous look. “What planet are you from?”

Samantha laughed. “I
do
know what you’re talking about. I think that, subconsciously, that’s one of the reasons I left Atlanta—or at least, why I stayed away so long.”

Liza looked at her. “I’m leaving, too, when I finish school. I can’t believe you came back.”

“Well, it’s a long story. But let’s get back to your mother’s friend Marjorie.”

“She could do whatever she wanted to. No one cared anymore, see? That’s the point. But she wouldn’t
want
to. She’d been
inside,
and you don’t get more inside in this city than being married to a partner at Simmons and Lee. After that, it’s all downhill.”

“A doctor wouldn’t do—a banker?”

“Nope. Might as well be
black.
”
Liza said that last word in an ironic way that told Sam about her liberal posture.

“Okay. So we know why Queen wouldn’t divorce your father. But what about him? And what makes you think they’re so miserable in the first place?”

“Which one do you want answered?”

Sam shrugged. “Both.”

“I have to tell you about him. Forrest Ridley is the most wonderful man in the world.”

Sam laughed a little. “Lots of daughters think that, Liza, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

“But he is! He’s funny, and he’s kind. He’s always there when I need him.” Her face clouded. She looked up at Sam, and suddenly her eyes were glistening with the threat of tears.

For the first time, Sam saw the little girl within the
young woman. She reached over and patted Liza’s hand. “Go on.”

“My friends tease me about being a daddy’s girl, and they say I’m spoiled. But I’m not. Daddy’s never spoiled me. He’s given me lots of advantages, I know that. And I’m grateful for them. But he’s always talked with me as if I’m a real person, not just his child. He taught me to respect people, to look for the good in them, and then to allow them their differences—just like he’s allowed me mine.”

“You’re a little different from the other girls you know?”

Liza smiled at the understatement. “You might say so. But Daddy didn’t stand in the way of my doing what I wanted, of my becoming a painter instead of a debutante.”

“Ah-ha! I knew we had something in common.”

“You paint, too?”

“No, I told them to take all that coming-out routine and shove it.”

“You did? Truly?”

“Truly.”

Liza leaned forward as if they were the closest of girlfriends sharing a confidence sweet as a chocolate ice cream sundae. “While the other girls in my group were going to New York to buy their dresses for their balls, I flew to New York too and stayed for a month with Daddy’s sister, my Aunt Jean, who’s in advertising, and we did all the galleries. And then she took me for another month abroad. I saw
everything
!”
She burbled on. “The Louvre, Giverny, the Prado, the Sistine Chapel, the chateaux.”

“Some dad to let you do that. And Queen?”

“Shit a brick. Said I’d ruined my life and that
Daddy had helped me. She didn’t speak to either of us for months.” She paused. “They don’t talk much at home anyway. They’ve slept in separate bedrooms for years.”

Samantha thought about the house tour Queen had taken her on. They’d skipped the family quarters on the second floor. Was Queen touchy about the number of occupied bedrooms?

“If you saw them in public, you’d never guess,” Liza continued. “They’re all lovey-dovey, or at least Queen is, and Daddy doesn’t do anything to change that impression and embarrass her.”

“Do you like your mother?”

The young woman didn’t miss a beat. “No, not very much. She’s not very likable. Did you think so?”

Sam hesitated. She was notorious for her directness, but in this case, she wondered, shouldn’t she try…

Liza laughed at her hesitation. “Your Uncle George told me I’d like you. He said we’re a lot alike.”

“He’s right. No, I don’t like Queen, Liza. I think she’s one cold customer.”

Liza said softly, as if she were talking to herself, “I’ve always thought of her as the Ice Queen.”

“So why does your father stick?”

“I’ve asked him that very thing.”

Samantha looked into the blue of Liza’s direct gaze. She wouldn’t want it trained on her when coupled with such a question.

“He always just shakes his head and says that promises like ‘till death do us part’ are promises not lightly undertaken.”

“Tell me why you’re so worried about him now,” Sam said.

Once again Sam heard about how Liza and her father had a standing date to bet the ball games every weekend.

“Queen says he’s missed dates with you before,” she said when Liza paused.

“Never.”

“And that you’ve forgotten that fact because you’re upset about breaking up with your boyfriend.”

“Really? Now, isn’t that interesting. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never had a serious boyfriend in my whole life.”

Four

“What’s for supper?” Sam asked, walking through
the kitchen.

Peaches was standing at the butcher-block worktable in the middle of the room, stirring cornmeal batter. “Nothing for you. Horace and I are having some hot tamale pie, but George said you all are eating out, going to a party.”

“George!”
Sam called down the hall as she wheeled out of the kitchen and headed toward his private quarters. She stalked through the open door of his sitting room.

“I waste my whole day talking with
your
friends about
their
problems, and then I come home to have Peaches inform me I’m going to a party! What the hell is going on here?”

George looked at her with perfect equanimity. “It’s nearly dusk. You must have enjoyed yourself if you stayed so long.” He reached over and turned down the volume on the recording of a book he was
listening to on his new state-of-the-art sound system. “This new Le Carré is something. Have you read it?”

“I asked you a question.”

“I like it almost better than the Smileys.”

She was exasperated. “Yes, I loved the book. And yes, I enjoyed talking to Liza, and Queen Ridley is some piece of work. No, I did not spend the entire day with them; I did manage to scratch out two or three cents’ worth of a livelihood by meeting with Hoke, and after seeing Liza I went back to the morgue and read background on sheriffs for a couple of hours. Though there’s been precious little in the news. I think I’ve already exhausted it. These boys aren’t much for publicity.”

“That’s probably why you’re so cranky. Not that I didn’t warn you. And they’re not going to be any more welcoming when you come snooping around, either.”

“That is
not
what we’re talking about. We’re talking about this damned party you think I’m going to. You know I don’t do parties.”

“And Peaches and Horace don’t do windows. Never did. I have to bring in a service.”

“What does that have to do with the price of radicchio at Cloudt’s Market?”

George grinned. “I thought you might want to meet some of Forrest Ridley’s friends. Edison Kay, one of the partners, is giving a cocktail party tonight. I didn’t mention it before because you’re such a stick-in-the-mud about social gatherings, but since it’s a perfect opportunity…” He trailed off.

Sam spoke to the ceiling. “Why do I take this
abuse? Is it because when I got sober I discovered that no one ever says anything interesting after ten o’clock—and that nobody says anything interesting at cocktail parties
before
ten o’clock either?” She shifted her focus to George.
“
Why
do you think I want to meet Ridley’s friends?”

“Because you’re curious about the man.” George twinkled. “We don’t have to stay long. Maybe Ridley will even be back from wherever he’s been by then and will show up at the party, and Liza’s worries will all be for naught. We’ll have a handful of fabulous hors d’oeuvres and come home.”

“While I’m still hungry?” Sam snorted. “That’s the other thing I hate about these damned parties. I end up starving. You can’t eat a proper meal while you’re standing around talking, and you can’t have a decent conversation because you’re so busy working the room.”

“Peaches is making enough tamale pie for leftovers,” George said. “Or we can probably twist Horace’s arm to stop us by the Varsity on the way home.”

Sam considered that offer for a minute. As much a part of the fabric of Atlanta as the Dogwood Festival, the Varsity was a gigantic drive-in and sit-down chili dog, french fry, and onion ring emporium near Georgia Tech that did so much business it had a glass-walled room devoted solely to the chopping of onions. Sam and Horace were mad about it. Peaches, who sneered at all cooking other than her own, was convinced the place served up sudden death.

“Okay,” Sam said begrudgingly. “But I’m only
doing it to humor you. We’re staying one hour. And we
better
stop at the Varsity.”

Samantha wasn’t dressed like a woman who was going to get a chili dog as she walked out the back door on the arm of her uncle. She was wearing a black silk slip of a dress with tiny sparkling rhinestones marching up and down its spaghetti straps. The dress was cut low enough to show off her considerable cleavage. Her color was high, her mouth a slash of scarlet. Her halo of short springy curls glistened like the regularly waxed finish of George’s old black Lincoln.

“You going to be warm enough, Sam?” Horace asked as he tucked her and George into the back seat.

“I brought a shawl,” she said, and held up a length of black cashmere with openwork like lace. Horace smiled, for Peaches had admired this shawl so much that Sam had ordered her one like it from San Francisco, except that Peaches’ wrap was the green of an old glass Coke bottle, perfect with her golden-brown complexion.

Horace straightened the bill of his favorite Atlanta Braves cap in the mirror, then wheeled the ancient Lincoln around the side of the house on the winding brick drive.

“Mr. Kay’s?” he asked, confirming their destination, and then they were on their way—hell-bent for leather, which was how Horace always drove. He was a superb navigator of the city’s roundabout routes and curving byways, which he considered a huge racecourse, and knew every inch of Atlanta except the new suburbs—which, in his opinion, didn’t matter anyway.

“So you thought Queen was cold,” George remarked.

“Glacial,” said Sam. “But Liza says her father’s a real winner. Is he?”

“Yep. But Forrest Ridley’s always been a puzzlement to me, too. He’s a real Jack Armstrong, all-American. As clean-cut as they come. The right schools.
Law Review.
We recruited him as an intern, the summer between his second and third years of University of Virginia law school. He’s always pulled more than his load, brought in millions in billable business. Made partner right on schedule, and has been an asset to the firm since the day he came on board.”

“So what’s the puzzlement?”

“I always wonder about anyone who has a permanent smile on his face.”

“Makes you wonder what you’d see if that smile ever cracked, doesn’t it?” Horace interjected from the front seat. “I bet he wasn’t so happy about that party at his house.”

“What’s that?” George asked.

“Said I bet Mr. Ridley was upset about that surprise party at his house a time ago.”

“What party?” asked George. “You been holding out on me?”

George was referring to Horace’s position as a major operator in the underground telegraph of gossip that connected the household staffs of the city’s Four Hundred. In fact, more than once in his law practice, George had depended upon that telegraph, for the word of a well-placed cook or housekeeper was better than that of a paid snitch, and the information thus gained was rich and substantial rather than a few dry facts that might only scratch the surface of the truth.

“I guess I forgot. But anyway,” said Horace, settling into the beginning of the story as if he were settling into an easy chair, “what I heard was that one evening a few weeks ago, all these people in black tie started showing up at Ridley’s front door, but he and Miz Queen weren’t expecting them.”

“How many?” George asked.

“Well…” Horace pushed back his cap a bit. “Before it was all over, there were about a hundred and fifty.”

“That many!” Sam exclaimed. “And they weren’t invited?”