Monument to Murder (30 page)

“Yeah, I understand,” Brixton said. “I understand that somebody got to you and your mother and—”

He was speaking into a dead phone.

Sayers arrived at one and they went to lunch at the Riverhouse Restaurant on West River Street, where Sayers particularly enjoyed the Savannah crab cakes made with native blue crab and served with a mango chutney and red rice. And there was fudge walnut cake for dessert. The man loved his food.

Brixton waited until their drinks were served before telling his large journalist friend about the conversation with Lucas Watkins. When he was finished, Sayers snorted and said, “Lovely folks you run with, Robert,”

“I’m still having trouble believing this,” Brixton said. “They’ve been bought off.”

“Or scared off. I tried getting to Mitzi Cardell.”

“And?”

“I was told to contact her father’s lawyer here in Savannah. I didn’t bother. The
Morning News
has a piece tomorrow on that convict’s claim that he was hired by Jack Felker to kill Louise Watkins. They got hold of Ward Cardell for a statement. He was all bluster—how dare the media besmirch the good name of a man who isn’t here to defend himself—Felker was an associate and a dear friend who lived an exemplary life—how dare anyone take the word of a convicted murderer, the scum of the earth, in a pathetic attempt to destroy a decent man’s reputation—yada yada yada. You say Felker was murdered. The police say that the ME pegged it as a natural death.”

Brixton sat with gritted teeth.

“What are you going to do?” Sayers asked after they’d ordered lunch.

“What
can
I do? I’ve been tilting at windmills ever since I got involved.”

“Want my advice?”

“Sure.”

“Bill the good preacher for big bucks. Hell, you’ve earned it, and I imagine he won’t balk at anything you ask for. After that, I’d forget the whole nasty mess.”

“What about you?” Brixton asked. “Will you pursue it any further?”

Sayers grinned and looked with happy anticipation at his appetizer, a double order of low-country shrimp and stone-ground grits served with tasso gravy. Brixton was content with a cup of lobster bisque.

“Me?” Sayers said after tasting the grits and indicating his approval. “I’ll go back and get the bureau up and running in our nation’s capital, keep the folks back here apprised of all the good deeds done for the nation by Savannah’s finest, our first lady and D.C.’s leading social light. Eat up, Robert. Don’t let it get cold.”

•  •  •

Brixton took Sayers’s advice and billed Lucas Watkins twice what he felt was fair. The check arrived in two days. It was drawn on the church bank account and indicated that it was for a “special project.” It cleared.

As he was about to leave the office that evening, he received a call from Wayne St. Pierre, inviting him to his home for a drink: “Sort of a welcome-back drink, Robert.”

Brixton arrived at the house at six and found his former colleague listening to the player piano pump out Johnny Mercer songs. He was dressed in a purple robe trimmed in silver and held a large snifter.

“Robert, so good to see you. I understand you’ve been through quite an ordeal in our nation’s capital. Come in, come in, Let’s celebrate your safe return and the successful completion of your case. Bourbon? Scotch? A cold, dry martini, shaken, not stirred?”

“Skip the drink, Wayne. You knew everything that was going down, didn’t you?”

“Pardon?”

“You told people everything that I was doing with the Watkins case from day one.”

“What in the world has gotten into you, Bobby?”

“Knock off the ‘Bobby’ crap. You’re wired in to the elite of this city, aren’t you? You like rubbing elbows with the movers and shakers, slip them a little information now and then to keep them appreciative, relay some gossip when it keeps them close, rich cruds like Cardell and Montgomery.”

St. Pierre sat in a large red chair and crossed his legs, the snifter held like a trophy. “Sure you won’t have a drink, Bobby—Robert? You’re in a frazzled state. Going back to Washington must have been upsetting for you. Actually, I invited you here tonight with a proposition.”

Brixton said nothing.

“I have it on very good authority that a friend of mine is looking for someone like you to head up security for his various business ventures. The pay would be substantial and—”

“Who’s this friend of yours, Ward Cardell? Or is it Warren Montgomery?”

“You’re such a cynic, Robert. I suppose that goes with your New York upbringing. I will tell you this. Savannah is quite a different place from New York. We do things our own way and don’t appreciate outsiders coming here and upsetting the applecart, as the saying goes. It seems to me that you have one of two choices: either become an adopted son of the old South and play by the rules, or go back home where the rules are different. Your call, Robert. Sure you won’t have a drink? Please. Join me. We go back a long way and despite our different backgrounds we have a lot in common.”

The pianist on the disk launched into Mercer’s “Everything Happens to Me.”

“The only thing we have in common is that we once wore the same uniform. You were the only one who knew certain things I was doing, and other people knew it because of you. You disgust me, Wayne.”

St. Pierre got up and leaned on the piano, keeping it between them. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, my friend,” he said. “You come here shootin’ off your mouth, accusing me of God knows what. Well, I will not stand for it, Bobby Brixton. I invited you here with good intentions. Now get your sorry ass out of my home. You hear me?”

“I hear you, Wayne. You know, I had visions of coming here and shooting you.”

St. Pierre laughed. “That would have been one dumb thing for you to do, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would have been dumb. That’s why I’m not doing it. All your rich friends are more important to you than what I was trying to do for a mixed-up young black kid who deserved better. You’re a whore, Wayne. You’re a disgrace to all the good, honest cops here in Savannah and everywhere else.”

“Good night, Robert.”

“No, Wayne. Goodbye.”

Brixton went through the front door, the piano strains of “Ac-Cent-Tu-Ate the Positive” following him. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt and started to pull a cigarette from it. He looked back through the open door to where St. Pierre stood posed at the piano. He crumpled the pack and tossed it ceremoniously into the neatly cultivated bed of azaleas that had lost their yearly battle with the summer heat.

One month later to the day, Robert Brixton drove away from Savannah—destination New York.

Flo Combes joined him there months later after she’d sold her shop and house.

And in Washington, D.C., and Savannah, business went on as usual.

About The Author

MARGARET TRUMAN
has won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, and poverty and pageantry, in the nation’s capital. She is the author of many nonfiction books, most recently The President’s House, in which she shares some of the secrets and history of the White House, where she once resided. She lives in Manhattan.

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