Then Hang All the Liars (8 page)

Horace picked up the teapot. “I'll go get some more.” Sam stared at his back. He knew something he wasn't saying.

“I think Emily went up there and stayed with her for a while that last year, and then they came home. Anyway,” she said and smoothed her lap, “I think I've been very patient about answering all these questions. Now it's your turn. What is this all about?”

George and Samantha exchanged a look.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Typical. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.”

“Now, Miriam, you know Emily did come to me as a lawyer.”

“George Adams, you haven't practiced law in five years. What you have practiced is poking your nose in other people's business.”

George laughed. “And romancing you.”

“Fiddlesticks!” But she ran her hand along the magnificent string of pearls George had given her, Devonshire cream against her pink skin, then reached for his hand.

Beau stood, and without saying a word, grasped Sam's elbows and pulled her to her feet.

“What?”

“I think these people want to be alone,” he whispered and propelled her into the entry hall. “Time for our exit.”

“
Your
exit.”

“Aw, Sammy. Come on.”

“Out,” she said and pointed.

His brow furrowed. He was even cuter when he was mad.

“Don't talk to me like I'm Harpo.”

“Then go. You sneaked in here on your mother's coattails. Despicable.”

“Tell me what this is all about with Felicity Edwards.”

“Don't try to divert my attention. Besides, you heard what George said.”

“Bullshit. Did Emily retain him?”

Sam paused.

“See? I knew it. Tell me.”

“Nothing that would interest you.”

“Okay.” He turned. “I guess I can take a hint when I'm not wanted.”

Just then, just that turn of his head, and he looked exactly like he had the night before at the party when he was talking with—

“What do you know about Laura Landry?” she blurted.

He turned back
real
slowly. She'd love to wipe that grin off his face with the back of her hand.

“Pretty, isn't she?”

“Forget I asked.”

“Aw, come on.” He punched her in the shoulder as if they were twelve years old. “I was only trying to get your goat. What do you want to know?”

Sam told him about the tip Charlie had given her, about the conversation she'd overheard between Laura and Miranda Burkett.

He whistled long and low. “Boy, wouldn't that be something?”

“You heard anything about it before?”

“Not a word. But then, I'm a pretty clean person, Sammy.”

She let that slide. “You know Laura well enough to know if she'd be involved, too?”

Beau shook his head. “I know her mother, Margaret, a little. Beth's taken some of her children's acting classes, and she knows Laura. I guess I could ask her and see if she knows anything. Beth's pretty discreet.”

“She's over at Scott?”

“Just started her freshman year.”

Beau was very proud of his only child. Sam could tell he was dying for her to ask more.

“How's she doing?”

“Looks like it's going to be aces all the way. She's knocking 'em dead.”

“Well, she's your daughter.”

His grin almost blinded her.

“Don't let it go to your head, pal. Does Beth know Miranda, too?”

“Sure. She used to come to our house all the time when they were little. They were both at Westminster.”

“You'll let me know what Beth says?”

“Over lunch.”

She narrowed her eyes.

He looked at himself in the mirror and straightened his tie.

“Why do I think the answer to that particular invitation's no?”

Six

Though her neat little figure didn't tell on her, Felicity Edwards had always had a sweet tooth. It was one of life's little ironies that her sister, Emily, who never gave a damn about sugar in the first place, got the diabetes while Felicity slid through life licking honey off a spoon. Invite her to a dinner party and she'd pick at her supper, then ask if she could have two desserts and, pretty please, some hot fudge.

Given that, this scenario was no surprise.

Felicity awoke late this Tuesday morning, as was her wont, slipped out of bed and into her favorite purple quilted silk wrapper, when
bump.
At the end of her dyed-to-match purple house slipper, her left big toe hit something.

“Lordy mercy, I hope it's not a snake?” she said aloud to herself in a tremulous falsetto, her inflection rising on the end in that way Southern ladies have, as if they were always asking a question. But she was just making a little joke. The thing in her shoe was too small to be anything like that.

She shook it out.

A Gold Brick candy bar! One of her favorites!

She peeled off the gold foil wrapper and devoured the morsel of creamy milk chocolate and pecans.

There was a time when Felicity was more herself that she would have at least brushed her teeth first, but that time wasn't now. What with her substituting healthy doses of Randolph's magic elixir for the lithium her doctor had prescribed, her life had become one long ride on a roller coaster. And if along the way there was a Gold Brick or two, that was no surprise.

So when she found another
petit cadeau
at the top of the stairs, she clapped her hands in delight, then grabbed it up and popped it down.

“Oh, a treasure hunt,” she cried.

She continued down the stairs, and there on the next-to-the-last step she spied a third piece of gold.

“What fun!” She picked up the pace, really getting into the spirit now, and made a quick turn through the ground floor. Nothing more in the double parlors, the dining room, the music room, the kitchen, the pantry, the utility room, the sun porch. Having completed the circle, she stood once again in the broad entry hall with her bottom lip poked out.

She stared into a massive mirror at her well-practiced pout. And then something went
ting-a-ling
in her brain and she struck a pose like one of Sargent's ladies. Her neck elongated, and the long purple housecoat became a ball gown. She relaxed the
moue
and replaced it with the faintest of smiles. From beneath languorous lids, she checked herself out. Oh, yes! She was elegant, breathtaking—and young. Absolutely like a debutante.

Then Felicity Edwards stepped out of the portrait for which she had so patiently posed, which was asking a lot of a girl with her high spirits, and walked out the front door of her parents' Elizabeth Street house. My God, what a beautiful morning! It had been a perfect year for that matter,
her
year, 1933. For Felicity was eighteen, and Atlanta was her oyster. Only a few months ago she had made her bow to society, and there was no question in anyone's mind that she was the belle of the season.

“The Depression be damned,” her father, the good Dr. Edwards, had cried, pounding his fist on the table so hard his wife and the crystal shivered. “My darling daughter won't be cheated of her due because of some Goddamned fluke of Wall Street.” And she wasn't.

Neither were the twenty other debs who danced with their fathers across the polished ballroom floor of the Piedmont Driving Club that spring, each and every one of them as sweet in their white net and tulle and lace as a wedding cake. And that was the point, that within a year or two the girls would be standing in a room much like this ballroom, hands joined with those of an ever-so-charming brand-new husband. For what else was a debut, this whirl of dances and parties with eminently available and desirable stag lines, culminating in Daddy's last dance, if not a wedding rehearsal?

And she had done very well. Felicity turned left now as she reached the sidewalk. Her dance card had always been filled before the band had played the first tune. In fact, she had danced so much that year that even with all the party sandwiches, the Virginia hams, the oyster and milk pies, and all those delectable desserts, her father had been afraid she was going to disappear. He had prescribed beer four times a day to keep her weight up. The alcohol had kept her head up, too, way up in the clouds so that much of the season was a hazy blur. Some nights she could hardly remember coming home to this house on Elizabeth Street, which her Grandfather Edwards had built just before the turn of the century and then later given to his son, her father, for a wedding present.

She stopped and looked back. There had never been a house in her entire life that she had liked better. Not even the townhouses of New York could hold a candle to this High Victorian Queen Anne mansion. Those were all cold stone, no matter how elegant their interiors, their public faces elbowed on either side by other buildings, pinched and cramped as if they had a headache. But this Delft blue three-story Victorian was set in a generous yard with both kitchen and flower gardens and a stable, now a garage, with servants' quarters. And a line of glorious oaks. For though most of Inman Park's trees had been sacrificed for building trench lines during Sherman's siege, Joel Hurt, the suburb's developer, had replanted oaks and exotic shrubs and trees.

Now Felicity looked up at one of Hurt's oaks that separated her home from that of the more restrained Beaux Arts house next door. Her glance swept from its wide branches down to its roots, and there she saw another golden twinkle!

She pounced on the chocolate tidbit. Oh, she hadn't had such a fine morning since—well, she couldn't remember when. She licked her fingers slowly. The chocolate had gone a bit soft in a spot of late-morning sun.

Then she crossed Euclid Avenue. There was Callan Castle, the former home of Asa Candler, the Coca-Cola king.

The Candlers had left this house some years ago and had built a much bigger mansion, Callanwolde, in Druid Hills when Inman Park had passed out of vogue. The Candlers had not only moved their house north, they had dug up their ancestors from Oakland Cemetery and taken them along to Westview. Many climbers, dragging family coffins behind them, had followed suit.

But the Edwards family had stayed put. They would never leave Inman Park, not even when the electric streetcar line stopped running downtown. They would ignore bumptious new bungalows. They would persevere through decay and decline and hang on until the neighborhood rose again with the phoenix of gentrification.

But Felicity wasn't thinking of any of that now. Felicity, who imagined herself once again eighteen, was just taking a stroll down Elizabeth Street on this bright, early fall morning.

More gold glinted beneath a hollyhock in Springdale Park and she gobbled her fourth Gold Brick.

A woman coming down the steps of her house across the street stopped and stared.

“Felicity, is that you?”

“Hello,” Felicity caroled, waving the arm of her purple dressing gown. “Marjorie, have you decided where you're going away to school?”

The woman, whose name was not Marjorie, and who had finished her schooling in Virginia more years ago than she cared to remember, shook her head. If she got that dotty when she was old, she hoped they'd shoot her—just like they'd shot her favorite horse who'd broken a leg when she was at Sweet Briar.

“You better go back home and get dressed,” she said.

“Oh, no. I'm all ready for Mary Eloise's ball.” Felicity did a cute little turn, showing off her gown.

Bless Jesus, the woman thought, and stepped back in her house. She was late for a luncheon, but at least she could stop a minute and telephone Felicity's sister.

Felicity strolled on down the street. What luck! Right there, marching along in the grass beside her straight as little soldiers, was a parade of Gold Bricks. One by one, she picked them up. She didn't eat all these right away. Why, there were too many. She'd make herself sick. Slipped them into her pocket. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten…marching. Past a clump of golden mums that lurched out toward her. A little coarse, chrysanthemums, common like zinnias. She'd have to speak to the Restoration about replacing them. Asters would be better. Too bad they couldn't do it all in orchids. Now that would be something.

But common or not, the clump of mums was home to another Gold Brick. On the other side of the flowers, the candies marched on. They crossed Delta Place, and led her into a little triangular park.

Numbers eleven, twelve, and thirteen paved the way through the park grass. Then they stopped.

Felicity looked up.

Right in front, looking rather like a small Parisian pissoir, was an antique wrought-iron lockup box.

“A good idea,” Felicity declaimed to the morning air. “Keep the bad guys fast till the police can come and get 'em.” Which is exactly what the lantern-topped structure was used for in the early part of the century.