Spring Fever (49 page)

Voncile looked stricken. “Oh heavens. He must have had his heart attack right after I talked to him.”

“I don’t think so,” Annajane said slowly. “Sallie said she found Glenn unconscious at around six that evening. That’s when she called the ambulance. They worked on him at the hospital, but the doctors said it was too late.”

“But that was hours and hours after I talked to him,” Voncile said. “I thought … I mean, I always assumed he’d gone to the hospital earlier in the day, right after we talked. Are you sure that’s right, Annajane?”

“Very sure,” Annajane said soberly.

Voncile crumpled her paper bag into a tight ball. “I just don’t understand. Why didn’t Sallie call the doctor? Or take him to the hospital that morning?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Annajane told her.

51

Pokey Bayless Riggs stood on the doorstep of her brother’s bachelor pad, a contemporary two-story wooden structure with soaring beams and weirdly jutting angles located on the grounds of the Cherry Hill estate, just out of Sallie’s line of vision. She’d called in advance and left numerous voice-mail messages, but she had gotten no response. Now she was determined to have it out with him, face-to-face.

She’d been ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door with no luck. Finally, she took a step backward and, cupping her hands into a makeshift megaphone, began hollering, “Davis Bayless! I know you’re in there, you weasel, so you might as well let me in.

“Davis! I’m not going away. I’ll stand here all night if I have to.”

Finally, she walked around to the back of the house, tried the kitchen door, and found it unlocked. She stepped inside and found Davis, seated at the smoked-glass kitchen table, eating a microwaved chicken potpie and washing it down with what looked like a very large tumbler of Dewar’s.

His suit jacket hung from the back of his chair, and he’d loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt.

“Go away,” he said sourly.

“Nope,” she said, seating herself at the table, opposite him.

“I got nothin’ to say to you,” he said, fishing a large green garden pea out of the potpie and lining it up on the edge of the plate with a lot of other discarded green peas.

“Then don’t talk,” Pokey said. “Just sit there and listen.”

“This is my damned house. I don’t have to sit here and take any crap off of you,” Davis said. “Why don’t you go on home to your husband and kids?”

But Pokey had had a belly full of her brother. Now she had fire in her eyes and was ready for a showdown.

“Don’t do this, Davis,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest and regarding him with a mixture of regret and disgust.

“Do what?” he asked, innocence itself. “Eat a potpie for dinner? You should try one.” He pushed his plate in her direction. “They’re really good. Jax Snax just bought this company. Maydene’s Home-Style Frozen Diner Dinners. Jerry sent me a big ole carton full of ’em. They got frozen pot roast, frozen chicken and dumplings, frozen mac n’ cheese. I may never have to go out to dinner again.”

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Pokey ordered. “Everybody in town knows what you’ve been up to. You’ve hired a lawyer to contest Daddy’s trust arrangement, and you’re already starting to drag our family’s name through the mud. And for what? More money?”

Davis placed his fork on the side of his plate with elaborate precision. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Look here, Pokey. I don’t see why you’re so hot and bothered about selling Quixie. I mean, let’s face it. You ain’t never really had to work a day in your life. Sure, you played at working for Daddy summers in college, and a little bit after you married Pete, but you’re just a stay-at-home mama. And that’s fine. You’ve got three swell little boys and another on the way. Pete makes a good living. Why do you wanna go messin’ around with stuff that doesn’t even really concern you?”

“Don’t you dare patronize me, Davis Bayless,” Pokey snapped. “I am not one of your stupid bimbos. I may not have worked in the day-to-day end of Quixie, but you better believe I know what goes on with our business, and I do care. I care deeply. Daddy knew that, even if you don’t, which is why he left me an equal share of the business.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t count on that trust agreement standing, if I were you,” Davis said lazily. “My lawyer says there’s loopholes in that thing big enough to drive a Quixie truck through.”

Pokey clenched and unclenched her fists and finally clasped them tightly together in an effort to keep herself from slapping the smile right off her big brother’s jowls.

“Your lawyer is a jackleg Yankee just dying to take you for every dime you’ve got,” Pokey said. “And in the meantime, you need to know that I will fight you every step of the way if I have to. Because I will be damned if I will allow you to sell off my heritage. And my sons’. I’ve taken a look at that Jax Snax offer, and it’s a load of garbage. You know what happened to that family-owned pretzel business they bought? They shut it down. Yeah. Spun off the one product they really wanted, shifted production of it to one of their own plants, laid off two hundred and fifty workers, then sold the equipment for scrap metal. That town was already hurting, but losing the plant was like putting a stake through its heart. Half the houses in town are in foreclosure, and I read on the Internet that they’ve closed the town’s only high school. They have to bus the kids forty-five minutes away to the next town over. I am not gonna sit still and let that happen here.”

Davis shook his head. “You and Mason just don’t get it. Frankly, Daddy didn’t get it either. Even six, seven years ago, the handwriting was on the wall. But he refused to believe it. Twenty years ago, there were nearly a dozen other family-owned soda companies operating in the Southeast. Now? You’ve got what? Three or four? If that many? You know why? Because it’s a lost cause. Quixie is a dinosaur. We can’t compete with the big boys. Not unless we become one of ’em.”

“See!” Pokey said. “When you think like that, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re still operating in the black, still have a good product, but I believe you actually
want
the company to fail. That’s why you resist any kind of change in the product line or spending any money to update the plant or the distribution network. You’re deliberately sabotaging Quixie.”

“Me?” Davis laughed. “I don’t have to do a goddamn thing to make that happen. All I have to do is sit back and let Mason keep on the way he’s keeping on. Which I don’t intend to do.”

Pokey took a deep breath. “What’s the matter with you, Davis?”

“Me? Nothin’. I am fine as frog hair.”

“No, seriously,” Pokey said. “You’re my brother, and I love you, but I don’t understand one thing about you. We were raised in the same house, by the same parents, but sometimes I wonder how you got to be the way you are. Don’t you have an ounce of loyalty towards our family?”

“I’m a businessman,” Davis said, shrugging. “Family loyalty’s got nothing to do with it. I love my big brother, but I have serious doubts about his abilities to run Quixie the way it needs to be run in this economy. I’ve tried to talk sense to him about that for the past five years, but to Mason I’ll always be the dumb baby brother. The wannabe.”

“You say you love your brother?” Pokey asked. “Is that why you slept with his fiancée?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Davis said. He took a long drink of the scotch, and she noted that his hand shook. Just a little. “And this conversation is beginning to bore me, little sister. What say you get the hell out of my house?”

“I’ll go when I’ve had my say,” Pokey retorted. “And I believe you do know what I’m talking about. You and Celia have been in cahoots over this Jax Snax deal for a long time now. I just wonder how long you’ve been in bed together, literally.”

“You’re crazy,” Davis said.

“Not as crazy as you,” she said calmly. “Let’s talk about Friday night, shall we? The night before Celia was supposed to marry Mason. Remember him? Your beloved big brother, the one you’re so loyal to? How crazy could you be, Davis, taking Celia to the same motel you always take your sluts to? How stupid could you be, paying cash but making sure to ask about the Quixie employee discount? And what kind of lowlife, slimy horndog struts around calling himself Harry Dix?”

Davis looked away and closed his eyes slowly.

“You don’t know anything,” he said. “You’re bluffing.”

“Really?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a photocopy of the registration book from the Pinecone and waved it under his nose. “That’s my proof. Your handwriting, and the place where you wrote down the license number of the Boxster. Dumb shit. And you should know, Celia was seen coming out of that room with you the next morning by more than one person. You are so busted.”

He opened his eyes. “Does Mason know?”

“No,” Pokey said. She put the photocopy back in her pocket. “He already knows she’s a lying, cheating piece of crap. I really don’t have the heart to let him know his own brother is just as bad. Or worse.”

“So, what? You’re gonna blackmail me now?”

“No. I’m going to appeal to your long-dormant sense of decency. And your greed. Pete and I have had a long talk. We want you to sell us your share of Quixie.”

“As if.” Davis drained the scotch in his glass and poured himself another tumbler full. He took a long drink, smacked his lips, and drank again.

Pokey reached over and took the glass out of his hand. “Listen to me, Davis. We’re serious. Jax was prepared to pay the family thirty million for Quixie. You own a quarter interest. Pete and I want to buy you out. We’ll pay you seven and a half million cash. You take the money, go do whatever you want to do. Buy that house on Figure Eight Island, take a job with Jax Snax, or whatever. Or just sit back and count your money. But you walk away from the company. And you drop your challenge to Dad’s trust agreement.”

Davis got up and walked over to one of the gleaming ebonized kitchen cupboards. He got himself another tumbler, grabbed the Dewar’s bottle, and poured himself another dose. He leaned up against the black granite countertop. “What if I don’t take your offer? What if I decide to stay around and fight?”

“You’ll lose,” Pokey said, her chin jutting out. “And in the process, you will have antagonized everybody in this town. You will have trashed Daddy’s good name, and you will have estranged yourself from your entire family. Including Mama.”

“Mama…” he started to say.

“Mama is feeling hurt and betrayed right now, finding out about Sophie the way she did. Although I’m not really certain she didn’t suspect all along that she wasn’t Mason’s child. She’ll get over it, eventually. And when she does, she will not want that piece of news broadcast all over some lawsuit and the Bayless family name dragged through the mud. And you had better believe she would never, ever, forgive you for the way you betrayed Mason by sleeping by Celia.”

Davis jiggled the ice in his glass and smirked. “All of y’all are gonna have to get over this thing you have against Celia.”

“And why is that?” Pokey asked.

He chewed on the ice for a moment before answering. “What would you say if I told you we’re together now?”

“You and Celia? Is this a rhetorical question, or is this your ass-backward way of telling me the two of you are an item?”

He shrugged. “It was probably inevitable. We both tried to pretend we weren’t attracted to each other, but hell, it is what it is.”

Pokey shuddered. “What it is is grotesque, Davis. The two of you together? It’s a bad reality show on a third-rate cable channel. But the sad thing is, the two of you deserve each other. I just hope Mason doesn’t find out when the two of you hooked up.”

“You just said you’d never tell Mason,” Davis pointed out.

“I wouldn’t. But if Mama were to find out…” Pokey shrugged. “You know what Passcoe’s like. It’s a small town.”

“It’s a shithole,” Davis muttered into his scotch. “A two-horse, two-traffic-light shithole.”

“All the more reason you should take the money and run,” Pokey suggested. “Delta’s ready when you are.”

“Maybe I will,” Davis said. “Tell Pete to give me a call in the morning, if he’s serious.”

“No need to talk to Pete,” Pokey said. “I handle all our family finances. I’ll have our lawyer draw up an agreement, and I’ll send it over to you in the morning.”

52

The kitchen table was set with placemats and blue and white checked napkins and blue glass water goblets. A perky bouquet of daisies in a red bowl sat in the center of the table, and tall white taper candles burned from blue glass candleholders.

Mason stood at the stove, long-handled fork poised over a cast-iron skillet full of frying chicken, while Annajane sat at a high stool at the counter, preparing the salad.

Sophie came clomping into the kitchen and her eyes widened. She was wearing a pink ballet tutu over her purple pajamas and pink cowboy boots. “Are we having a party?” She climbed up on the stool beside Annajane’s and plunked down a picture book, some paper, and a box of crayons.

“Yep,” Mason said. “It’s a Friday-night party. And you’re invited.”

“Who else?” Sophie asked, noticing that the table was set for three.

“Just us,” Mason said. “It’s a very exclusive gathering. We used to have Friday-night parties a lot when I was your age, Soph. It was the only time my daddy ever cooked. And he only knew how to cook one thing, so we always had fried chicken.”

“I don’t like fried chicken,” Sophie said, her eyes sparkling behind the thick glasses. “I love it!”

“Me, too,” Annajane said. “How about we start the party with a cocktail?”

“For me?” Sophie looked puzzled.

“It’s a kiddie cocktail,” Annajane explained. She took a plastic highball tumbler from the cupboard. She poured in a couple inches of Quixie, added a splash of ginger ale, then topped it with a maraschino cherry before presenting it to the child. “Ta-da!”

“Mmm,” Sophie took a delicate sip. “Am I allowed to have Quixie?”

“In very small amounts,” Mason said. “For very special occasions. Like tonight.”