Blood, Ash, and Bone (7 page)

The man behind the voice was short and round, with silver hair slashing across his forehead in an Errol Flynn wave. He had a neatly-trimmed goatee and eyes like a satyr and was already brandishing both a martini, half-gone, and a cigar, unlit. I recognized him from the
AJC
article—Reynolds Harrington, Audrina’s brother.

He stood beside Marisa. “My sister said to make sure Trey here was comfortable.” He turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Reynolds Harrington. You must be Tai.”

I smiled and took his hand. “I guess I must.”

He had a playboy’s grip—firm but gentle, with soft friction against my skin as I pulled my fingers back.

He returned his attention to Trey. “Glad you could make it at the last minute. Frankly, I never thought Audrina would go for this, but the old gal’s finally coming into the twenty-first century.”

Trey didn’t reply. He shot a glance at Marisa, then Reynolds. When he didn’t know how much to reveal about a subject, he usually said nothing. But his nothings were as telling as his somethings.

I kept the smile on Reynolds. “Big plans?”

“A golf tournament, if Trey and Marisa say it’s feasible.”

“Oh wow, it’s up to these two, huh?”

Trey said absolutely nothing. Neither did Marisa. At the front of the plane, the flight attendant welcomed two more passengers on board. One of them carried a magnum of champagne, the other a bag of golf clubs. The latter belonged to Reynolds, I was guessing, since he already wore the attire—white pants, a yellow collared shirt, a single glove stuck in his pocket.

“I’ve been telling Audrina for some time now that she shouldn’t keep the family collection locked up in that house. History belongs to the people. It needs to be shared.”

“Admirable sentiment,” I said. “But how does that involve a golf tournament?”

“Sharing means a museum, and a museum means fundraisers. I have a week to put together a plan, within budget, so I called in the best. According to Audrina anyway.” He looked me up and down. “Do you golf, Ms. Randolph?”

“I do indeed, Mr. Harrington.”

“Then come out tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you all about it. Marisa and I are trying out the resort course. We’d love for you to join us.”

Marisa shook her head. “Unfortunately, Tai’s working tomorrow, aren’t you, Tai?”

“I can always fit in a round of golf.”

She looked as if she wanted to strangle me, then jabbed her chin at Trey. “You come too.”

Trey stiffened. “I don’t golf.”

“All the more reason to come. You’ll need a feel for the game if you’re going to design the security plan.”

“But—”

“I’ll help you with the paperwork afterward. Take a break. Enjoy the morning.”

Trey glared at her. Reynolds smiled. I settled into my sumptuous seat and fastened my seatbelt. I remembered Audrina’s pretend disdain, paired it with Reynolds’ effusive inclusion and Marisa’s steely machinations. Wars within wars going on here.

I widened the smile. “It’s a foursome.”

“Spectacular.” Reynolds stuck the cigar between his teeth. “See you bright and early at the clubhouse. Eight o’clock tee time.”

He wandered back to the front of the plane to greet the new arrivals. When he was out of earshot, Marisa leaned toward Trey, the Charlestonian lilt in her voice suddenly acidic.

“Don’t start.”

He tapped the folder in front of him. “I was hired to create a premises liability and general assessment prelim. That does not include playing golf.”

Marisa picked up the folder and scanned it. It was a neat day-by-day breakdown of Trey’s duties and responsibilities, organized chronologically and cross-indexed with a master checklist. She scribbled something in the margin, initialed it, then flipped the pages, crossing out that entire agenda and writing “golf” instead.

She handed it to Trey. “Now it does.”

He said nothing. She leaned even closer, and the carefully-constructed package revealed itself for the artifice it was. The heavy make-up, the hair expertly sprayed into immobility, the tightly-girdled figure packed into structured linen.

“Let me remind you,” she said. “In every contract you sign, there is an ‘as-needed’ clause.”

“I know that.”

“Then you know that if I say something is needed, you provide it. That’s how that clause works.”

Trey glared some more. Trey could work a glare like no man I’d ever known. This one whizzed inches from my face and caught Marisa right between the eyes.

She didn’t blink. “I know you’d rather be behind your desk, up to your elbows in paperwork. But you’re my premises liability agent. That means you occasionally have to visit some premises.”

More glaring. But no arguing. Someone up front called her name, and she tossed a hand in their direction without taking her eyes from Trey.

“You will reschedule,” she said. “You will behave. And you will golf.”

She straightened her jacket, turned her back to us, and headed for the front of the plane. Apparently she was playing with the big boys once again, ending Phoenix’s short era of downsizing and discretion.

I turned to Trey. “So what now?”

“Now I’m rewriting my agenda so that I can squander five hours of research time tomorrow.”

He looked frazzled. I reached over and put a hand on the back of his neck. Tight as the skin of a drum. I rubbed my thumb against the grain of his deltoid.

“Breathe, boyfriend.”

He inhaled. Exhaled. The flight attendant came by with snacks and drinks. I got both, a white wine paired with smoked almonds and wasabi-roasted peas in a tiny delicate cup. Trey declined.

“This assignment should be straightforward,” he said. “A simple premises assessment. I’m already wasting Saturday night with that dress ball. Wasting an additional morning is—”

“Did you say dress ball?”

“Yes, the Black and White.” He frowned. “Aren’t you going?”

“Not on your life.”

“But it’s the culminating event of Expo.”

“It’s out of my income bracket. Also, there’s not an army in the world that could get me in a hoop skirt. You’re on your own, Rhett.”

Trey blinked at me. “Hoop skirt?”

“It’s period dress, Trey, didn’t you know?” I smiled. “You’d better hope Armani makes nineteenth-century frock coats.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I agree. Have fun.”

He looked as if he might choke on his own outrage. “Every item on my schedule is…and I suspect that…I mean, it seems as if there’s an agenda that has not yet been shared with me. As if I’m being…I need a word. Multi-syllabic, starts with ‘m.’”

“Manipulated?”

“Yes. Exactly. And that you’re being manipulated too.”

“Probably. Yes.”

“But Marisa agreed…we agreed.”

For the first time, I heard the betrayal in his voice. Back in the spring, Marisa had authorized all manner of subterfuge to spy on him. Nothing personal, she’d explained, just business. They had reached a tentative tête-à-tête, but he had not forgotten. And while his intuition had several wires sprung, it functioned well enough to flare the occasional red alert. It was flaring red now.

“Don’t be fooled by that charade,” I said. “Marisa wants me on that golf trip. Because you’re right—we’re being manipulated, both of us.”

“How?”

“The Harringtons are after the Bible, and they’re using us to draw a bead on it. Me to find it, and you to inadvertently sell me out.”

He looked insulted. “I would never—”

“Not intentionally, of course, but you know as well as I do that sometimes you accidentally reveal exactly what you’re trying to conceal. Marisa’s counting on some informative pillow talk to fall out of your mouth.”

“I assure you, my assignment doesn’t include spying on you, in bed or otherwise.”

“Of course it does. They just haven’t told you so.” I regarded him over the rim of my wine glass. “But guess what? Savannah is my own personal briar patch. I’ve got moves here, boyfriend. Try and keep up.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”

I took a sip of wine. “Oh, yes. Immensely. You might too if you’d loosen up a bit.”

He kept his eyes on me as the jet engines roared and the plane swung toward the runway. I knew the look. It was the look I got when I pulled off a Krav move perfectly, or hit a solid kill shot at the range. A surprised but confident look, as if I’d upped the ante when he had four aces in pocket.

The plane rocketed down the runway, the sudden force slamming me backwards in my seat. And before I could figure out what was happening, my snack cup went flying toward the back of the plane. It hit the restroom door with a ballistic smack, scattering nuts and dried peas like BBs.

I looked around the cabin. Every single person—Marisa, Reynolds, the guy with the golf clubs—had a steadying hand on their plastic cups. Trey’s expression was bland, practically innocent. He raised his hand for the flight attendant.

“Excuse me,” he said, “my girlfriend lost control of her snack mix.”

Chapter Nine

The windshield wipers swish-swished as we crossed the Talmadge Bridge, the river a slate-colored twist beneath us. Our rental, a Lincoln Town Car, ferried us over the water in a cushioned bubble, as if its tires weren’t even touching the pavement. In the distance, the faux gaslights of downtown Savannah glowed through the patchy fog.

Across the river on Hutchinson Island, the Westin Hotel stood sentinel against the mother-of-pearl sky, a sixteen-story, sandstone-colored rectangle with eighteen holes of golf spreading behind and six hundred feet of deepwater dockage before. Right next door, the Savannah International Convention Center stretched along the water—post-modern, stark white, its curved roofline half-concealed by the shrouding mist.

“Our home away from home,” I said. “For the next week anyway.”

Trey flexed his fingers and frowned. “This steering is loose. And everything’s…soft.”

“You’re used to the Ferrari, that’s all.”

I turned back to the window, listening to the clop-clop-clop of the bridge plates underneath us. I’d left Atlanta in cold clear sunshine, but Savannah was warm and misty, in the first stages of a soft ripening autumn. It stirred something deep inside me, something tidal.

“The whole city’s cursed, you know. By a frustrated journalist, shaking his fist on his way out of town: ‘I leave you, Savannah, a curse that is the far worst of all curses—to remain as you are!’ And it has, in many ways. Exactly the same.”

Trey kept his eyes on the road. Marisa and Reynolds followed behind us in a BMW, their headlights ghostly and inexplicably sinister. All of us gathering, each for different reasons, the Lowcountry spreading out its ancient, mossy welcome mat.

I turned to Trey. “So you’re creating a security plan for Reynold’s very own golf tournament.”

Trey hesitated, then nodded. “The Harrington Lowcountry Classic.”

“Is he coming to the Expo too?”

“Yes. And the reenactment at Skidaway Island. And the Black and White Ball.”

“Busy man, Mr. Harrington, when he’s not trying to snatch my Bible.”

Trey tightened his fingers on the wheel and said nothing. He missed the sensory feedback and response of the Ferrari. I’d once thought Ferraris were about indulgence, but after spending time with Trey, I knew they were really about control.

Not that I’d ever gotten my sticky fingers on the wheel. Not yet anyway.

Despite the rain, I rolled down the window and let the smell of the Lowcountry into the car—the humid air thick as vegetation, the chemical pong of the paper mill, the salt-clean top notes of the ocean. It was impossible to separate the land and the sea in Savannah. They encroached and flowed, sometimes antagonistic, always intimate, island and marsh and estuary in sustained restless cycles.

I turned back to Trey. “Are you working tonight?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Not officially. There is someone I’d like to see, though.”

“Who?”

“Winston. My former employer. He runs a tour shop on River Street. John thinks that Hope might have contacted him about finding a buyer for the Bible.”

“Do you think John’s right?”

“I think Winston is a good place to start. Like a reunion, only…not.”

“Tai—”

“I’ll stick to places I know, and I’ll tell you where I’m going and what I’m doing at all times.”

In profile, Trey always looked older, sterner, the first hint of wrinkles visible at the corner of his eye. He flexed his fingers on the wheel yet again, softening his grip.

“Okay,” he said. “That seems sensible.”

***

We’d booked an executive suite at the Westin, on the seventh floor. The room sprawled like a drunken debutante, overflowing onto a balcony with a river view. Below us, the dock lay like a charm bracelet, bordered by a courtyard and swimming pool. Across the water, the blocky River Street skyline glowed gray and amber. The drizzle had dampened the party somewhat, but I saw pedestrians up and down the cobblestones, umbrellas bobbing.

Trey unlocked the interior door and opened up an adjoining room. This was going to be his office while we were there. Mine too apparently. My boxes of Confederate gear were stacked in the corner, rain-dappled but obviously towel-dried by efficient hands. Trey opened his briefcase on the desk and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork.

I linked my elbow with his. “Not yet. Come here first.”

He let me pull him onto the canopied balcony. I pointed across the river, to a small shop next to a docked riverboat on the east end, the touristy section. “That’s Lowcountry Excursions. I watched them build this hotel from right there.”

“You gave tours there.”

“Yep.” I patted the balcony. “This place we’re standing used to be scrubland. When General Sherman threatened the city, the Confederate army escaped across the river to this island, then fled for South Carolina under cover of night. The mayor, waking up the next morning to an undefended city, wisely surrendered. And Sherman decided not to burn down the place.”

A massive freighter ship plowed its way past, blocking our view. It was as big as an office building, colossal, with Cyrillic characters spelling out its name.

I shook my head. “Every summer, some drunken tourist tries to swim across the river, with ships like that coming through.”