21
I
slipped into the vending room
and Sonny followed me. I was in shock. I fumbled around in the bottom of my
sweater pocket for change. I felt Sonny behind me. He kissed the back of my head
and placed both of his hands on my shoulders.
“What’s your poison, beautiful?” he whispered in my ear. “Still
Diet Coke?”
I nodded.
“And Miss Vivi…Dr Pepper?”
I nodded again.
“I got it.” I stepped aside and let Sonny take care of it. He
handed me the ice-cold can and Vivi’s Dr Pepper.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Anytime, sweetheart,” he said. “It will be okay, Blake.”
I smiled at him. I popped the top and sipped the Diet Coke. I
knew Sonny was right. Eventually it would work itself out. Sonny was facing me
and I looked up at him, Just as I was about to say something, Harry appeared in
the doorway. The sight of him took my breath away. It startled Sonny, too, since
he was just holding me and calling me sweetheart.
“Hi, Blake,” he said quietly. This was the first time I’d seen
him since I caught him giving Dallas a breast exam.
“Hi,” I said, looking at him—no, glaring at him—and not sure
exactly what I was feeling. I had done my own deed, I knew that, but the
situation with Dallas made me feel like I had lost. Blake O’Hara does not share.
I didn’t even like sharing my clothes with her, let alone my husband! Even if I
thought I was through with him, some jealous, girl-who-gets-everything part of
me was sad. Sonny interrupted my thinking.
“I was just telling Blake about the cigarette and Meridee and
that we both believe Lewis is alive.”
Back to business.
“Wait a second, Sonny. I got the whole DNA, letters, Meridee
connection,” I said. “But why does all of this make you think Lewis is alive?” I
looked at them both. I knew those looks—they had not told me everything.
“C’mon, you two. What is it?”
“Let’s go back to my office,” Sonny suggested.
Vivi was up and pacing when we all walked in.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said, looking
straight at Harry.
“Vivi.” Harry acknowledged her, then stared straight at her
belly. Vivi was beginning to show and she was dressed in a too-tight navy tank
top and a light white sweater hanging open in the front. The little baby bump
was now just barely visible and the look on Harry’s face almost made me
laugh.
“Yes, Harry. I am pregnant. It’s time I said it out loud for
everyone,” Vivi said. “And, yes, it’s your missing brother’s baby. Now somebody
better damn well tell me right now, is my Lewis alive or not?” Vivi was
understandably upset.
“Now!”
she demanded.
Harry and Sonny both stopped and stared for a minute. They both
looked like this just added another fly in the ointment.
“Okay, well, I believe a congratulations is in order here,”
Sonny said, leaning over to Vivi and giving her a kiss on the cheek. All Harry
could manage was a smile and a nod.
“Yes, congratulations,” he said.
Sonny picked right back up on the business at hand. “We brought
Dallas in for questioning today,” he said.
“Oh! How convenient for you, Harry. Was she just as easy to
talk to as she was to—”
“Vivi!” I cut her off. “We have to remember we are here for
Lewis.”
“We had known for quite a while about that interesting phone
call she got the day Lewis disappeared,” Harry said. “It was one of the first
things she told Blake the day of the press conference.”
“I remember,” Vivi said.
“So,” Sonny broke in, “we questioned her. She told us that the
day that Lewis met you at the Fountain Mist, someone, her source, had called
with some strange information. A tip,” he explained.
“A tip that Lewis would go missing?” she asked.
“No, actually,” he answered. “But that he was seen at the bank
and withdrew a large sum of money.”
“Well, what do
we
believe?” Vivi
asked, becoming impatient.
“We believe Lewis may have owed someone some money,” Sonny
began to explain. “We believe he had to pay someone by the end of the day. He
met you for your…uhh, meeting, and couldn’t bring himself to tell you. So he
made the snap decision to just go ahead and get outta Dodge. Get the money and
get it delivered. We think someone was helping him. We don’t have any idea why
he owed the money. We are hoping Kitty or Meridee can fill in the blanks.”
Harry took over. “We do know now for a fact that Meridee was
the smoker in the condo the night before Lewis went missing.”
“What?” Vivi jumped up again. “You mean to tell me that Mother
was the woman with Lewis the night before? Oh, my good God, why? Somebody
explain that one to me.”
I shook my head at Sonny. Harry’s sense of timing had always
been off. Sonny jumped in. “She’s on her way here and she is going to be the one
to explain it to all of us.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “The night before Lewis
disappears, Meridee is at his condo. Is this a fact?”
“We think so, based on the cigarette evidence. We can place her
there between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m.”
“Okay,” I continued. “Then the next day, Lewis meets with Vivi,
disappears then later that day Dallas gets what will be the first of many phone
calls saying someone saw Lewis at a bank in Birmingham a couple of hours after
Vivi had reported him missing. The bank records show it was in fact Lewis, and
that he withdrew a large sum of money and no one has seen him since. Do I have
this straight so far?” I said like I was in a trial.
“Yes, so far, unless you count all those sightings at Walmart
and the Piggly Wiggly, I think that’s what we’ve got,” Sonny answered.
“So, where is Lewis? Who does he owe the money to?” I
asked.
“Well, why don’t we ask Miss Meridee herself,” Sonny
suggested.
And in the doorway of Sonny’s office stood Meridee and Kitty
with a look on their faces I will never forget. They looked like two little
girls who had been caught stealing from the candy store and were in a huge heap
of trouble. I looked directly at Kitty. She looked exhausted but raised an
eyebrow at me that told me she got everything we were after. I nodded and looked
at tiny little Meridee. She’d be eighty in a week and she was still causing
trouble. She looked at me and made no gestures. She looked full of both guilt
and pleasure at the same time. She seemed to almost relish in the confusion that
surrounded her. Vivi approached her and placed both hands on Meridee’s
shoulders.
“Look at me, Mother. Please, please, tell me.” Tears fell from
her cheeks. “Is my Lewis…is he alive?”
Meridee, all five feet of her, looked at Vivi straight in her
eyes and nodded. “Yes, he is.”
Vivi lost it. “Well, why in hell didn’t you tell me? You knew I
was losing my mind! I can’t believe you let me go through that for all this
time! Meridee, why?”
Sonny moved over to Vivi to steady her.
“Why don’t we all step down the hall to the vending room. We
can sit at the big table in there and get all this out in the open,” Sonny
said.
I looked at Sonny and he lifted his drink as if in a toast. I
got it. He was telling me not to worry. But I had to. It’s what I do.
I walked between Vivi and Sonny. Harry walked between Meridee
and Kitty. We all found seats at the big table and the questions began flying.
Everybody was talking at once and voices were escalating. Harry and I avoided
even making eye contact. Vivi was crying and mumbling over and over, “Where is
my Lewis? Where is my Lewis?” It was completely out of control.
After a few minutes, Meridee stood.
“If y’all would hush for one damn minute, I could just tell
y’all what ya wanna know.”
The room fell into silence. The tiny woman with the face of an
aging beauty queen commanded the group. She was fixin’ to have her say.
“Okay, Meridee, the floor is all yours,” Sonny said. Meridee
looked slowly at each of us with her ocean-blue eyes, which squinted now as she
studied us. No one dared speak or even breathe loudly. Mother was about to
talk.
“Harry, several years ago, you and Lewis had that damn
family-splitting fight…and all over money. I thought, my God, your daddy and
granddaddy both would turn over in their graves. You ought to be ashamed,” she
said.
Harry was silent.
“That stormy night, your poor, drunk-ass brother showed up
soakin’ wet at my door. I put him to bed with some coffee and hoped he would
sleep it off and that everybody would come to their senses and fix it in the
morning. Little did I know, he would wind up in jail.
“While he was in jail, he wrote to me. He knew I took him in
before, and he knew I was still behind him. I believed in him. I always did. He
loved that microphone and that Crimson Tide like my sweet Frank did.”
She walked around the table and stopped again at Harry, just
over his shoulder. He looked down.
“You know, I always liked your brother,” she went on. “He had a
lot of potential, but you were an arrogant SOB to him. I never liked that.
Anyway, he needed my help to repay some bad loans, and then he needed someone to
invest in a dream of his. So he wrote to me. Couldn’t come to you now, could he,
Harry? I have my own money. I decided to help him. Frank would have greatly
approved. And I didn’t need anyone else’s approval. So we’ve been working on
something and it has finally started comin’ to a head. He needed to put it to
bed. And it was nobody’s damn business, ’cause nobody else would have supported
him anyway.”
Again, she was staring at Harry, but she had a choice look for
me, as well. I was clearly enjoying this verbal beating of Harry, but I knew I
had to accept some of the blame myself. I’d followed Harry blindly, after all.
And that was no one’s fault but mine.
“Lewis had to do what he had to do,” Meridee continued. “And he
had to do it totally alone, ’cause y’all would have tried to stop him. So he
left.”
“Where did he go?” Vivi asked. “I am carrying his little one
now and wherever he is, he will be a daddy soon.”
Meridee walked over to Vivi. She bent down to look her in the
eyes. She kissed her cheek and said, “I am so happy for you and I know Lewis
will be ecstatic. He’s very much alive, baby girl, and I am so sorry I had you
worryin’ this whole time. He’s coming home to you soon. He is wrapping up
something important.”
“What the hell has he gone and done now?” Harry stood up,
boiling over at all the accusation he’d faced in Meridee’s eyes. “You think
you’ve got Lewis under control—but you’ve just been naive! He’s taken you for a
ride, just like he did to me and my mother.”
Meridee stood up straight and shot Harry a look that could
knock the breath out of you. She was so good. The original Sassy Belle.
“You know what?” she said firmly, “I really appreciate your
underwhelming concern for me and my money, but that boy came to me for a reason.
You’ll just have to wait and see what that is. Not one damn bit of this concerns
you.”
She wasn’t finished. “And Dallas is another one y’all
disrespect. That girl is rough around the edges for sure. Having a damn lunatic
for a mother who was a no-show most of her life sure as hell didn’t help,
either. But she’s got balls, that girl. And she knows how to get that story.
It’s high time all of you quit your snobby lookin’ down at her and give her some
respect.”
“Nanny!” I stood and shot back. “How dare you? She made out
with Harry! Yesterday! Right in my own backyard!”
“Well, Harry made out with her, too, don’t you forget. And last
I checked, she’s not the one who’s married.”
I sat back down and strictly avoided eye contact with
Sonny.
“So yes, everybody, make your judgments. It was me at Lewis’s
apartment before he took off. And, yes, Kitty—I was smokin’.”
“What about the clothes? The ones that washed up in the river?
I know they were his,” Vivi said.
Sonny broke in. “We think he may have thrown those in the day
he disappeared.”
“He was doing whatever he had to do to make this work and keep
Harry off his trail,” Meridee explained. “He wanted—no, he
knew
this would work if he just could do it without interference. No
law against throwin’ your clothes in the river.”
I took a big swig and finished off my drink.
Meridee went over and spoke to Vivi quietly.
“Vivi, listen to me. You know Lewis. He is doing a good thing.
Don’t you worry. He’ll come back to you soon and he’ll have you a story to tell.
You’ll be proud of him. It’s all he ever wanted. Someone to be proud of him. I
know I am.”
“Why would he not want me to know about this?” Vivi asked.
“I know he meant to tell you. That’s why he called you to meet
that morning. But he was worried it would put you in an awful spot with the
media and all. And especially with Blake. Both of them, Blake and Harry, would
have hounded it outta you till they got what they needed to stop him from doing
this deal. He just needed to get gone and put it all to bed. I’m sure when he
sees you he will tell you everything.”
“Well, I may be proud of him later but right now that really
makes me mad,” Vivi said. “I’m so mad I could cry, but I’m so happy he’s alive,
too. I’ll have to beat the livin’ crap outta him when he gets back.”
I touched Meridee’s old hand that still held her wedding rings,
slipping around on old bony fingers. “Nanny,” I said, looking over at her. “I
understand, I think. Is that why you left to go gambling? Were you helping him
somewhere?”
“Hell, no—” she laughed “—I was gambling just like I said. I
just decided to get the heck outta town when he left. It’s been hard enough to
hold my tongue. I didn’t want to have to lie, too. Besides, nobody would suspect
the little old lady, would they? Especially if I was gone.” She laughed. “Y’all
trust me. I have never been wrong about a person in my life, and I’m not about
to start at eighty years old.”