Sleep No More

Chapter 3

By the time Waters saw Eve Sumner again, he had nearly convinced himself that the strangeness of their initial encounter had been a distortion of his imagination. Their second meeting was as unexpected as the first, the occasion a party for a duke and duchess of the Mardi Gras krewe to which Waters and Lily belonged. Like New Orleans, Natchez had celebrated Fat Tuesday in the nineteenth century, and the tradition had been revived in the second half of the twentieth. Mardi Gras parties were not of a scale comparable to those of Natchez’s greatest tradition, the Spring Pilgrimage, but they compensated for this by being less staid and generally more fun. Waters and Lily attended only two or three a year, and this accounted for Waters not knowing Eve Sumner was a member.

The party was held at Dunleith, the premier mansion of the city. If any single building personified the antebellum South as it existed in the minds of Yankees, Dunleith did. Standing majestically on forty landscaped acres and flanked by outbuildings styled after Gothic castles, this colossal Greek Revival mansion took away the breath of travelers who’d circled the globe to study architecture. At night its massive white columns were lit by fluorescent beams, and as Waters and Lily pulled up the private driveway in Lily’s Acura, he saw a line of cars awaiting valets at the broad front steps.

“I hear Mike’s done a fantastic job of restoration,” Lily said, referring to Dunleith’s new owner, a coowner in Waters’s largest oil field. “He’s adding on to the B and B in back. I can’t wait to see it.”

Waters nodded but said nothing. The days following a dry hole were always long ones, filled with useless paperwork, regretful phone calls to investors, and consoling visits from colleagues. This time he felt more subdued than usual, but his partner had become almost manic in his desire to put together a new deal. That morning, Cole had pressed Waters to show him whatever prospects he was working on, claiming he was in the mood to sell some interest. “Can’t let people think we’re down,” he said in his promoter’s voice, but his eyes held something other than enthusiasm.

A valet knocked lightly on the Acura’s window. Waters opened his door, got out, and went around for Lily. She wore a knee-length black dress that flattered her figure, but she carried a glittering gold handbag he had always thought gaudy. He had mentioned it once, but she kept carrying the bag, so he dropped the issue. He didn’t know much about fashion, only what he liked.

“There’s…what’s his name?” said Lily. “That actor who bought Devereux.”

Waters glanced up at a gray-haired man on the front gallery. The man looked familiar, but Waters couldn’t place him. Natchez always collected a few celebrities. They arrived and departed in approximate five-year cycles, it seemed to Waters, and he never paid much attention.

“I don’t remember,” he said. As he turned away, he saw a formfitting red cocktail dress and a gleaming mane of dark hair float through the massive front door of the mansion. A spark of recognition went through him, but when he tried to focus, all he saw clearly was a well-turned ankle as it vanished through the door. Still, he was almost sure he had just seen Eve Sumner.

When Lily paused on the gallery to speak to the wife of a local physician, Waters was surprised by his impatience to enter the house. When she finally broke away, and they passed into the wide central hallway, he saw no sign of the woman in the red dress.

Tonight’s party was larger than most Mardi Gras court affairs. About forty couples milled through the rooms on the ground floor, with more in the large courtyard in back. Two bars had been set up on the rear gallery, and a long wine table bookended by six-liter imperials of Silver Oak waited at the back of the courtyard. A black Dixieland band played exuberant jazz a few yards from the wine table, their brass instruments shining under the gaslights. Waters recognized every guest he saw. Many he had known since he was a boy, although quite a few new people had moved to town in the past few years, despite its flagging economy.

He left Lily engrossed in conversation with a tennis friend and got himself a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. He and Lily had an understanding about parties: they mingled separately, but every ten or fifteen minutes they would contrive to bump into each other, in case one was ready to make a quick exit. Waters was usually the first to make this request.

Tonight he spoke to everyone who greeted him, and he stopped to discuss the Jackson Point well with a couple of local oilmen. But though he eventually moved through every room of the house, he saw no sign of the tight red dress. Seeing Lily trapped with a talkative garden club matron, he delivered her a Chardonnay to ease the pain. He was making his way back to the bar to refresh his gin and tonic when his eyes swept up to the rear gallery and froze.

Eve Sumner stood twenty feet away, looking down at him over a man’s shoulder, her eyes burning with hypnotic intensity. She must be tall, he thought, or else wearing very high heels for her face to be visible over her companion’s shoulder. The man was talking animatedly to her, and Waters wondered if the speaker thought those burning eyes were locked on him.

“John? Is this the line?”

Startled, Waters looked around and realized he was blocking access to the bar. “Sorry, Andrew.” He shook hands with a local attorney. “Maybe I don’t need another drink after all.”

“Oh, yes you do. I heard about Jackson Point. Drown your sorrows, buddy. Go for it.”

When Waters turned back to the gallery, Eve Sumner was gone. He looked to his left, toward the rear steps, but she was not among the guests there. He glanced to his right, at the northeast corner of the house, but saw only shadows on that part of the gallery. He was about to look away when Eve Sumner stepped around the shadowy corner, raised her drink in acknowledgment, then receded into the shadows like a fading mirage. Waters stood mute, a metallic humming inside him, as though someone had reached into his chest and plucked wires he had not even known were there.

“What can I get you?” asked a white-jacketed bartender. “Another Bombay Sapphire?”

“Yeah,” Waters managed to get out. “Hit it hard.”

“You got it.”

Eve had known he was looking for her. Not only that. It was as if she had known the precise moment he would look up at the corner that concealed her. She could have been peeking around it, of course-spying on him-but that would have looked odd to anyone standing nearby. Yet one moment after he’d looked that way, she’d stepped from behind the wall and saluted the precise spot he occupied.

He took a bitter pull from his drink and glanced around for his wife. Lily wasn’t the paranoid type, despite their troubles in the bedroom, but she did tend to notice the kind of eye contact Eve Sumner had just given him.

This time she hadn’t. Before he could go looking for her, Lily appeared at the top of the courtyard steps, coming up from the rear grounds with the manager of Dunleith’s bed and breakfast. She’d obviously been taking a tour of the new construction. A dozen women at the party would have liked to see it; trust Lily to simply walk up and ask the manager for a private tour. She caught her husband’s eye and silently communicated that she was ready to leave. Though separated by only fifteen yards, Waters knew it would take her ten minutes to cross the space between, as she would be stopped by at least three people on her way. He sipped his gin and looked up at the crowded gallery.

The liquor had reached the collective bloodstream of the party. The Dixieland band launched into a rousing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and several couples began a chain dance. Most of the women wore sequined dresses and glittering masks that reflected the lamplight in varicolored flashes, and their voices rose and echoed across the courtyard in a babel of excitement. The men spoke less but laughed more, and tales of hunting deer in nearby forests mixed with quieter comments about various female guests. Waters felt out of place at these times. He hunted a rarer thing than animals, inanimate but maddeningly elusive. Sometimes he hunted in libraries rather than the field, but that didn’t lessen the thrill of the chase. With three drinks in him, though, he felt the old wistful dream of getting back to Alaska or New Guinea, choppering over glaciers and rappelling into volcanoes. With this dream came a memory of Sara Valdes, but suddenly her guileless face morphed into the seductive gaze of Eve Sumner, and a wave of heat warmed his skin. Then Eve’s face wavered and vanished, leaving the archetypal visage of Mallory Candler. Mallory had been gone ten years, but not one person at this party would ever forget her-

“Stop,” he said aloud. “Jesus.”

He set his drink on a table and rubbed his eyes. He felt foolish for letting Eve get to him this way. What was so strange about her behavior, anyway? Both Lily and Cole had told him she was sexually adventurous, and for some reason, she had picked him as her next conquest. Anything beyond that was his imagination. She likes married guys, Cole had said. Fewer complications….

“John? Hey, it’s been a while.”

Waters turned to see a man of his own age and height standing beside him, a wineglass in hand. Penn Cage was an accomplished prosecutor who had turned to writing fiction and then given up the law when he hit best-seller status. Penn and Waters had gone to different high schools (Penn’s father was a doctor, so he had attended preppy St. Stephens, like Cole and Lily and Mallory), but Penn had never shown any of the arrogance that other St. Stephens students had toward kids from the public school. Penn had been in the same Cub Scout pack as Waters and Cole, but only Penn and Waters had gone all the way to Eagle Scout before leaving for Ole Miss. They hadn’t seen each other much since Penn moved back to Natchez from Houston, where he’d made his legal reputation, but they shared the bond of hometown boys who had succeeded beyond their parents’ dreams, and they felt easy around each other.

“It has been a while,” Waters said. “I’ve been working on a well.”

“I’m working on a book,” Penn told him. “Guess we both needed a break tonight.”

Waters chuckled. “I already got my break. Dry hole. Two nights ago. Seems like everybody knows about it.”

“Not me. I’m a hermit.” Penn smiled, but his voice dropped. “I did hear about your EPA problem, though. Are you guys going to come out all right on that?”

“I don’t know. When the EPA tells us whose well is leaking salt water, we’ll know if we’re still in business or not.”

“The cleanup costs could put you under?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Waters thought of the unpaid liability insurance. “But hey, I started with nothing. I can make it back again if I have to.”

Penn laid a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes I think we wish for some catastrophe, so we could fight that old battle again. Prove ourselves again.”

“Who would we be proving ourselves to?”

“Ourselves, of course.” Penn smiled again, and Waters laughed in spite of the anxiety that the author’s mention of the EPA had conjured.

Penn inclined his head at someone on the gallery. Two men leaning on the wrought-iron rail parted, and Waters saw Penn’s girlfriend, Caitlin Masters, looking down at them. She was lean and sleek, with jet-black hair and a look of perpetual amusement in her eyes. Ten years younger than Waters and Cage, she’d come down from Boston to knock the local newspaper into shape, and because her father owned the chain, a lot of Natchezians had groused about nepotism. But before long, nearly everyone admitted that the quality of reporting in the Examiner had doubled.

“Caitlin seems like a great girl,” Waters observed.

“She is.”

While Penn watched Caitlin tell a story to two rapt lawyers on the gallery, Waters studied his old scouting buddy. Penn had become famous for writing legal thrillers, but he’d also written one “real novel” called The Quiet Game. Set in Natchez, the book’s cast of characters was drawn from the people Waters had grown up with, and the hidden relationships that surfaced in that book had left him in a haze of recollection for a week. Livy Marston-the femme fatale of The Quiet Game-had been inspired by Lynne Merrill, one of the two great beauties of her generation (the other was Mallory Candler), and Penn had clearly felt haunted by Lynne the way he himself was haunted by Mallory. Had Penn had an experience similar to his own at the soccer field? he wondered. Had The Quiet Game been an exorcism of sorts?

“Where’s Lynne Merrill these days?” he asked.

The smile froze on Penn’s face, but he recovered quickly and tried to play off his surprise. “In New Orleans for a while, I think.”

After an awkward moment, Waters said, “I’m sorry I said that. I was…trying to figure something out.”

The author looked intrigued. “Something besides whether Lynne was the basis for Livy Marston in my book?”

“I knew that from the moment I saw her on the page. No, I wanted to know if you ever get over something like that. An affair like that. A-”

“A woman like that?” Penn finished. He looked deep into Waters’s eyes, his own glinting with the power of his perception. It was a bluntly penetrative act, and Waters felt oddly violated by it. “My answer is yes,” Cage said slowly. “But somehow I don’t think you’d answer that question the same way tonight.”

When Waters said nothing, Penn added, “It’s not a passive thing, you know? You have to work it out of you. Or something has to. Someone. If you’re lucky, you meet a woman who finally obliterates all trace of the one who-who came before. Or knocks the memory down to a tolerable level, anyway.”

“Penn!” Caitlin called from the gallery. “I need to get over to the paper. Get me a gimlet for the road.”

At that moment, Lily touched Waters’s shoulder and said, “Go take care of that girl, Penn Cage. I need my husband.”

Penn smiled and walked over to the steps, but as he ascended them, he glanced back over his shoulder, and Waters saw deep interest in his eyes.

“Let’s go,” Lily said quietly. “I’d like to just slip around the side of the house, but we need to tell Mike we enjoyed ourselves.”

Waters followed her up the steps and into the main hall. Conversation indoors had grown to a din, and most faces were flushed from alcohol. Lily walked quickly to discourage buttonholing, but she kept an eye out for their host as she picked a course through the crowd. As they neared the front door, she caught sight of him, but there were too many people between them to make progress. Mike helplessly turned up his hands, then blew Lily a kiss and waved good-bye. Waters nodded thankfully and started toward the door with Lily on his heels. He had his hand on the knob when an old woman cried, “Lily Waters, it’s been a coon’s age! You come here and talk to me this instant!”

Lily reluctantly broke away and walked to a lushly upholstered chair to pay her respects to a grande dame of the Pilgrimage Garden Club.

As Waters stood in the crowded hall, a cool hand closed around his wrist, and something feather-soft brushed the side of his face. Before he could react, a sultry voice said, “You didn’t imagine anything, Johnny. It’s me. Me. Call me tomorrow.” Then something wet brushed the shell of his ear. Before he could jerk away, sharp teeth bit down on his earlobe, and then the air was cold against his skin. He tried not to whirl, but he turned quickly enough to see the red dress and black mane of hair vanish through the door.

He thought Eve was gone, but then she reappeared, the upper half of her face hidden by an eerily predatory mask of sequins and feathers. She did not smile, but her gaze burned through the eyeholes of the mask with such intensity that a shiver went through him. Then the door closed, and she was gone.

“I’m ready,” Lily said from his left. “Let’s go before someone else traps me.”

Waters began to walk on feet he could barely feel.

You didn’t imagine anything…It’s me….

He hesitated at the door. If he walked outside now, he and Lily would have to go down the steps and stand with Eve while they waited for the valets to get their cars. He would have to make small talk. Watch the women measure each other. Call me tomorrow….

“What’s the matter?” asked Lily.

“Nothing.”

Lily pulled open the great door and walked through. Waters hesitated, then stepped out into the flickering yellow light coming from the brass gasolier above their heads.

Eve stood at the foot of the wide steps, her back to them, waiting for her car. Her shoulders were bare, her skin still tanned despite the changing season.

You didn’t imagine anything, Johnny….

As Lily started down the steps, Waters caught movement to his left and instinctively turned toward it. Standing on the porch smoking a cigar was Penn Cage’s father, Tom Cage. A general practitioner who had treated Waters’s father until his death, Tom Cage took a token position in all of Waters’s wells. He’d had a three sixty-fourths interest in the Jackson Point deal.

“Hey, Doc,” Waters said, stepping over and extending his hand. “You recovered from that spanking we took?”

“I’m philosophical about losses,” Dr. Cage replied. “I don’t risk much. I never make a killing, but neither do I lose my buttocks.”

“That’s a good attitude.”

Tom smiled through his silver beard. “You should recommend it to your partner.”

“Cole?”

“Last time Smith was in my office, his pressure was way up. And that scotch isn’t doing his liver any favors. Or his diabetes.”

Cole had been diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes two years ago, but he ignored his condition so regularly that Waters sometimes forgot he had it. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised.

“Good. He doesn’t give a damn what I tell him. And make him take that pressure medication. If it’s giving him side effects, we’ll find another drug.”

“Thanks.”

Waters looked down the steps and saw Lily standing alone as Eve Sumner swept toward the driver’s door of a black Lexus. Eve didn’t acknowledge Waters, but she winked at Lily before she disappeared into the car’s interior. As Waters gaped, the Lexus shot forward with an aggressive rumble.

He descended the steps and stood beside Lily as the Acura pulled up the circular drive. “She must sell a lot of houses,” he said, trying to sound casual. “That was an LS-four-thirty.”

“I wonder who paid for it,” Lily said archly. “But maybe she did. All the real estate agents drive more car than they can afford. They think image is everything in that business.”

Waters got out his wallet and took out some ones for a tip.

“She told me she’d like to see the inside of our house sometime,” Lily went on. “That means somone’s interested in it.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That Linton Hill won’t be on the market for as long as I’m alive.”

“That’s pretty definite.”

“It won’t put Eve Sumner off for a week. Watch and see.” Lily brushed something off the front of her dress. “I wonder if her breasts are real.”

Even in his unsettled state of mind, Waters knew not to touch that one. Still, the question surprised him. Lily wasn’t usually given to such comments. Eve Sumner seemed to bring out the cat in her. Maybe she had that effect on all women; hence, her reputation.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice them,” said Lily. “She told some girls down at Mainstream Fitness they’re real, but I think they’re store-bought. She’s a fake-baker too.”

“A what?”

“Her tan, John. Here’s the car.”

Waters tipped the valet and got behind the wheel, his inner ear still cold from the saliva Eve Sumner had left on his skin.

chapter 4

“What do I think? I think you’re losing your mind.”

Cole Smith leaned back in his sumptuous office chair, kicked a pair of gleaming Guccis up on his desk, and lit a Macanudo. His eyes shone with incredulity.

“So how do you explain it?” asked Waters.

“Explain what? Evie wants to do the wild thing. Where’s the mystery?”

“I’m talking about what she said.”

“What she said?” Cole shrugged. “Okay, let’s recap. At the soccer field she said zip. Right? She blew you a kiss.”

“It looked like she said, ‘Soon.’ I told you that.”

“It looked like she might have said that. But Eve Sumner has no way of knowing what secret things you and Mallory said to each other twenty years ago. And since she didn’t actually say anything, I think we can assume she blew you a freaking kiss.”

“And last night?”

“‘You’re not imagining anything’? ‘Call me tomorrow’?”

“Right.”

Cole chuckled and blew a blue cloud of smoke across his desk. “She’s just recognized what your partner already knows: that since your marriage, you’re a little slow on the uptake where sex is concerned. You haven’t hooked up in, what, twelve years? John Waters, Old Faithful. Last of a breed. Evie’s telling you you’re not wrong, that you’re not imagining that she’s coming on to you. You should call her.”

“What about ‘It’s me’?”

“Maybe she’s already tried to get your attention and you missed it. Sent you something, maybe. ‘It’s me.’ Get it? ‘I’m the one trying to get your attention.’”

“Nobody’s sent me anything.”

Cole sighed wearily but said nothing more.

Waters looked around the room. Cole’s office felt more like a den than a working room. The walls were festooned with Ole Miss Rebels pennants and other memorabilia: a football helmet signed by coach Johnny Vaught, a framed Number 18 Rebels jersey autographed by Archie Manning, a Tennessee Vols jersey autographed by Archie’s son Peyton, snapshots of Cole with pro athletes, a nine-pound bass he’d caught when he was seventeen, samurai swords he’d collected in his early thirties, and countless other souvenirs. Waters always felt a little embarrassed here, but the investors loved it. Even if they supported rival LSU, the Ole Miss relics made for lively conversation.

“What are you telling me, John?” Cole asked. “You think Eve Sumner is really Mallory Candler? Back from the grave?”

“No. I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is, she knew that word, ‘Soon,’ and she knew the context.”

“So what? I knew about it too.”

“You did?”

“Sure. I saw you and Mallory do that a dozen times in Oxford.”

Waters studied his partner’s face, trying to remember how it had looked twenty years ago.

“You did it at frat parties, in the library, all kinds of places. And if I saw it, Mallory’s friends saw it too.”

“But Eve Sumner wasn’t a friend of Mallory’s. She’s ten years younger than Mallory.”

“Maybe Eve has an older sister who was at Ole Miss.”

“Does she?”

“How the hell do I know? I doubt it, though. Evie’s not even from Natchez. She’s from across the river somewhere. I think she graduated from a junior college. Yeah, she told me that. Mallory was a whole different class than Evie, John. Though I hate to admit it.”

“Why do you hate to admit it?”

“Why? Mallory couldn’t stand having me around. Anyone or anything that took you away from her for five seconds, she hated with a passion. Do you remember how bad it got when she lost it? I don’t even want to get into that. She almost fucked up your whole life. That bitch-excuse me, that woman-is dead. And any appearance of evidence to the contrary tells me my best buddy is losing his fucking grip.”

Waters pressed down the disturbing images Cole’s words had conjured. “I’ve never come close to losing my grip.”

Cole nodded indulgently. “Not since Mallory. But everybody has a breaking point. You’re used to having all your ducks in a row. Your whole life is about that. Now everything you have is up in the air. We could both be dead broke in a month. That’s bound to be affecting you down deep.”

“I don’t deny that. But it’s not making me hallucinate.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never gotten over Mallory, John. You almost did, but then she was murdered, and you actually started feeling sorry for her. Even though the chick might have killed you one day. Or Lily. Or even Annelise. You’ve told me that before.”

“I know.”

Cole leaned forward and laid his cigar in a Colonel Reb ashtray. “Drop this bullshit, Rock. Eve Sumner wants you in her pants-end of story. You got a decision to make: walk the strange road, or keep doing your martyr act.”

“Goddamn it-”

Smith held up his hands in apology. “Sorry, sorry. Saint John of the great blue balls can’t take too much honesty.”

“You want me to be honest about your life?”

Cole sighed. “We’ll save that onerous task for God.”

They fell into silence and were quite comfortable with it. A partnership could be like a marriage that way; two people sitting in a room, neither talking nor feeling the need to, all communication made abundantly clear through a complex interplay of movement, sighs, and glances. Waters and Cole had a lot of practice at this. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, and even attended the same school until the integration laws were enforced and Cole’s parents moved him to St. Stephens Prep. Two years later, Cole’s family moved to a more affluent neighborhood where all the houses had two stories and there were rules about what you could keep in your yard. Waters’s parents had similar plans, but nine months after Cole moved, Henry Waters was standing beside a pipe truck in Wilkinson County when a chain broke and ten thousand pounds of steel pipe casing slid off the truck bed and crushed him.

He lived for three hours, but he never regained consciousness. The doctors never even got him stable enough for surgery. All Waters remembered was a horribly stitched and swollen face with a breathing tube going into the nose and his mother holding a shattered purple hand. John had taken hold of that hand for a few seconds. It was hot and stretched and did not feel natural. The calluses were still there, though, and they let him know it was still his father’s hand. Henry Waters was a good geologist; he didn’t have to do manual labor. But somehow he was always in there with the roughnecks and workover crews, cranking on three-foot wrenches, lifting pumps and motors, thrusting himself into the dirty middle of things. His biggest smiles had always flashed out of a face covered with grease or crude oil.

Cole was the only boy John’s age to attend the funeral. Waters remembered sitting in the pews reserved for family, looking back into rows of old people, and seeing one thirteen-year-old face. After the service, Cole came up and shook his hand with awkward formality. Then he leaned in and quietly said, “This sucks, man. Your dad was a cool guy. I wish it hadn’t happened.” The adult that Cole Smith had grown into would have to commit a profound betrayal to erase the goodwill that this moment of sincerity-and others like it-had engendered. Cole had certainly tested Waters’s patience through the years, but in sum, he was the one man John felt he could trust with his life.

“Speaking of meeting God,” Waters said into the silence. “I saw Tom Cage at Dunleith. He told me you’re not taking your blood pressure medicine.”

Cole picked up his cigar and puffed irritably.

“I know you’re not watching your diabetes. Your weight’s still up, and I never see you check your sugar.”

“It’s under control,” Cole said in a taut voice.

“‘Control’ isn’t the word that comes to mind when I think of you.” Waters let a little emotion enter his voice. “You could stroke out, man. You could go blind. That happened to Pat Davis, and he was only thirty-seven. Diabetes is serious business.”

“Christ, you sound like Jenny. If I want a lecture, I’ll go home, okay?”

Waters was about to reply when Sybil Sonnier, their receptionist, walked in with something for Cole to sign. She did not smile at either of them; she walked primly to the desk and handed Cole the papers. This pricked up Waters’s antennae. Sybil was twenty-eight years old, a divorcee from South Louisiana, and much too pretty to be working in an office with Cole Smith. Cole had “dabbled” with their receptionists before, as he called it, and one of his escapades had cost them over fifty thousand dollars in a legal settlement. At that point, Waters had vowed to do all the hiring himself. But when their last receptionist’s husband lost his job and left town, Waters had been on vacation. When he got back, he found Sybil installed at the front desk: one hundred and twenty pounds of curves, dark hair, and smiles. Cole swore he had never touched her, but Waters no longer trusted him about women. When Sybil exited, Waters gave his partner a hard look.

“Sybil’s been pretty cold for the past week. You got any idea why that might be?”

Cole shrugged. “PMS?”

“Cole, goddamn it. Did you sleep with her?”

“Hell no. I learned my lesson about employees when I had to pay reparations.”

“When we had to pay them, you mean. Next time you pay solo, Romeo.”

Cole chuckled. “No problem.”

“Back to your health. You don’t get off that easy.”

Cole frowned and shook his head. “Why don’t you use all this energy you’re expending on paranoia and lectures to generate a new prospect, Rock?”

This was an old bone of contention between them. Their partnership was like a union of the grasshopper and the ant. Whenever they scored big, Waters put forty percent of his money into an account reserved for income taxes. The rest he invested conservatively in the stock market. Each time they drilled a new well, he maintained a large share of it by giving up “override,” or cash profit up front. That way, if they struck oil, he was ensured a large profit over time. Cole preferred to take the lion’s share of cash up front; thus his “completion costs” on the wells were smaller, but so were his eventual profits. Even when Cole kept a large piece of a well, he almost always sold his interest for cash-usually the equivalent of two years’ worth of production-the day after the well hit. And Cole simply could not hang on to cash. He and his wife spent lavishly on houses, cars, antiques, clothing, jewelry, parties, and vacations. He invested in ventures outside the oil business, whatever sounded like big money fast. He had hit some big licks, but he always lost his profits by sinking them into ever-bigger schemes. And most damaging, Cole gambled heavily on sports. This addiction had begun at Ole Miss, where he and Waters had roomed together for three semesters. When Cole moved into the Kappa Alpha house and continued his partying and gambling, Waters stayed in the dorm. Only two things had allowed Cole to remain solvent through the years: a knack for buying existing oil wells and improving their efficiency by managing operations himself; and a partner who continued to find new oil, even in the worst of times. Thus, he was always after Waters to generate new prospective wells. As the attorney of the two, Cole handled the land work-leasing up the acreage where their wells would be drilled-but he saw his real job as sales. And a natural salesman without something to sell is a frustrated man.

In the absence of a prospective oil well, Cole set about selling what he had on hand-himself-usually to the prettier and more adventurous wives in town. He promoted himself to his chosen paramour with the same enthusiasm he gave to oil wells-though with slightly more discretion-ultimately convincing her that she had to have Cole Smith in her life, beginning in her bed. It was all about ego and acceptance. Cole had that manic yet magical combination of insecurity and bravado that drives sports agents, fashion models, and Hollywood stars. And in the oil business, Cole Smith was a star. That was why his name was first on the sign and on the letterhead. Years ago, Cole had suggested this order based on the alphabet, but Waters knew better. It made no difference to him. The proof of primacy in the partnership was in their private discourse and in the awareness of the close-knit oil community. The people who mattered knew who put the “X” on the map and said, “This is where the oil will be.” The rest was showbiz.

“Oh, hey,” Cole said casually. “I meant to tell you. I’m in a little bind over some margin calls on that WorldCom. I need some cash to tide me over the next thirty days.”

Waters struggled to keep a straight face. Cole had said this as if he made such requests all the time, but in fact, it was the first time he had ever asked for a substantial loan. Cole had been in financial trouble from time to time, but he always found sources of emergency cash, and he’d never borrowed more than fifty bucks from Waters for a bar tab.

“How much do you need?” Waters asked.

“About fifty-five, I think.”

“Fifty-five…thousand?”

Cole nodded, then pursed his lips. “Well, seventy-five might be better. It’s just for thirty days, like I said. But seventy-five would smooth things out a little flatter.”

“A little flatter,” Waters echoed, still in shock. “Cole, what the hell’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” A lopsided grin. “Business as usual in the Smith empire.”

“Business as usual?”

The grin vanished. “Look, if you don’t want to do it-”

“That’s not it. It’s just that I want to really help you, not-”

“You think I’m a bum on the street?” Cole’s face went red. “You’ll give me five bucks for food, but nothing for another drink?”

His bitter tone set Waters back in his chair. “Look, maybe we need to talk realistically about what could happen if the EPA investigation goes against us.”

“Why? If it goes our way, seventy-five grand is nothing to you. And if it doesn’t, that money won’t help either of us.”

He was right. But Waters couldn’t help thinking that their exposure would be a lot less if Cole had paid the goddamn liability premium like he was supposed to. Cole had always said it was an oversight, but Waters was beginning to wonder if he had needed and used that cash for something else.

“Cole, why didn’t you pay that insurance premium? Are you in real trouble?”

His partner toyed distractedly with his cigar. “John, you’re like a wife who keeps dredging up some old affair. ‘But why did you do it, Cole? Why.’ I just forgot, okay? It’s that simple.”

“Okay.”

Waters thought Cole would look relieved at his acceptance of this explanation, but he didn’t. He glanced nervously through the cloud of smoke and said, “So, you can slide me the cash?”

Waters was searching for a noncommittal answer when the phone on the desk rang. Cole picked it up but did not switch on the speakerphone, as he once had with all calls. “What is it, Sybil?…Yeah? She give a name?”

Cole’s face suddenly lost its color.

“What is it?” asked Waters. “What’s happened?”

“You’ve got a phone call. A woman.”

“Is it Lily? Is Annelise all right?”

“Sybil says she gave her name as Mallory Candler.”

A cold finger of dread hooked itself around Waters’s heart.

“Let me handle this,” Cole said sharply. “I’ll put a stop to this bullshit right now.”

“No. Give me the phone.”

Cole reluctantly passed the hard line across the desk. The cold plastic pressed Waters’s ear flat.

“Who is this?”

“Eve,” said a low female voice. “I thought you might hang up unless I said what I did.”

“What the hell are you trying to do?”

“I just want to talk to you, Johnny. That’s all.”

Johnny… “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I know you’re suspicious. Maybe even afraid. You don’t understand what’s happening. I’m going to prove to you that I’m not trying to hurt you. Only to help you.”

“How can you do that?”

“Your daughter’s in trouble, Johnny.”

Waters went into free fall. He covered the phone and hissed at Cole: “Call St. Stephens and make sure Annelise is in class.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it!”

Cole grabbed a different extension. “Sybil, get me St. Stephens Prep. The lower elementary office.”

“What do you know about my little girl?” Waters said into the phone. “Have you hurt her?”

“God, no. She’s fine right now. I’m just telling you that she’s in danger at that school. That’s all I want to say. Talk to her about it, then call me. I’m going now.”

“Wait-”

“You’ll understand soon, Johnny. I’ll explain everything. But you have to trust me first.”

“I’ll understand what?”

“What happened to Mallory.”

“What about Mallory? Did you-”

Cole whispered, “They just let the kids out of school. Your maid picked up Annelise five minutes ago.”

Waters felt only slight relief. “Listen to me, Ms. Sumner. Did you have something to do with Mallory Candler’s death? Did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her,” Eve said in a soft voice. “I am her.”

Waters closed his eyes. His voice, when it finally came, emerged as a whisper. “Did you just say-”

“The world isn’t how we think it is, Johnny. I know that now. And soon you will too. Soon you’ll understand.”

“What do you mean? What are you-”

The phone clicked dead.

Waters jumped to his feet and ran for the door.

“What the hell’s going on?” Cole yelled.

“I’m going to get Annelise!” Waters veered into the hall, checking his pocket for his keys as he ran. “I’ll call you when I find her.”

“Let me drive you!” Cole shouted, but Waters was already halfway down the stairs.

Waters drove fifty miles an hour through the center of town, the Land Cruiser’s emergency lights flashing. When he hit State Street, he accelerated to eighty. The beautiful boulevard tunneled through a large wooded area in the center of town that concealed two antebellum homes: sprawling Arlington plantation; and his own smaller estate, Linton Hill. He’d tried to reach Lily on her cell phone but failed, which meant she was probably swimming at the indoor pool downtown. That was why Rose, their maid, had picked up Annelise from school. He’d bought Rose a cell phone last year, but half the time she forgot to switch it on.

Annelise didn’t have soccer practice this afternoon, and he prayed that she didn’t have ballet or gymnastics or any of the other countless activities she pursued with the dedication of a seven-year-old career woman. He often wished the world were as simple as it had been when he was a kid; that there were long afternoons when Annelise would have nothing to do but use her imagination and play.

He slowed and swung the Land Cruiser into his driveway, then accelerated again. For the first thirty yards, trees shielded the house, but when he rounded the turn, he saw Rose’s maroon Saturn parked in the semicircular drive, and his pulse slowed a little. He parked beside her and sprinted up the steps, then paused at the door and took a breath. He didn’t want to panic Rose or Annelise if there was nothing to worry about.

When he opened the door, he smelled mustard greens and heard metal utensils clanking in the kitchen. He started to move toward the sounds, but then he heard Annelise’s voice down the hall to his left.

He found her sitting on the floor in the den, playing with Pebbles, her cat. She was trying to coax Pebbles into a house she had built out of plastic blocks that reminded him of LEGOS but weren’t.

“Daddy,” she complained, “Pebbles won’t check into the kitty hotel!”

Waters smiled, then struggled to keep the smile in place as tears of relief welled in his eyes. Seeing Ana playing there, it was hard to imagine what he’d been afraid of two minutes ago. Yet Eve Sumner had sounded deadly serious on the telephone. Your daughter’s in danger at that school….

“How was school today, punkin?” he asked, sitting beside Annelise on the floor.

“Good. Why won’t she go inside, Dad?”

“Cats are pretty independent. They don’t like being told what to do. Does that remind you of anybody?”

She grinned. “Me?”

“You said it, not me.”

Ana pushed the cat’s bottom, but Pebbles pressed back against her hand and glared like a woman groped in an elevator. Waters started to laugh, but stopped when he saw something that would normally have caused him to scold his daughter. The family’s fifteen-hundred-dollar video camera was lying on the floor behind Annelise.

“Honey, what’s the camcorder doing on the floor?”

Annelise hung her head. “I know. I wanted to make a movie of Pebbles in the hotel I built.”

“What’s the rule about that camera?”

“Only with adult supervision.”

“We’ll make a movie later, okay? I want to talk to you for a minute. We haven’t spent enough time together lately.”

She looked up at him. “It’s always like that when you’re drilling a well.”

From the mouths of babes. “Has everything been going okay at school lately?”

“Uh-huh.” Annelise’s attention had returned to Pebbles.

“Are there any bullies bothering you?”

“Fletcher hit Hayes on the ear, but Mrs. Simpson put him in the sweet chair for an hour.”

The sweet chair. “But no one’s picking on you? Other girls, maybe?”

“No.” Annelise grabbed a paw and earned a feline slap.

“Have you seen any strangers hanging around the school? Around the playground, maybe?”

“Um…no. Junie’s dad hung around the fence for a while one day, but then a policeman came and made him leave. Her parents are divorced, and her dad’s not supposed to see her except sometimes.”

God, they have to grow up fast, Waters thought bleakly. Another idea came to him. He didn’t want to consider it-Annelise was only in the second grade-but he knew that the dark side of human nature observed no rules. “Honey, has anyone…touched you somewhere they’re not supposed to? Boys, I mean?”

Annelise looked up, her eyes interested. “No.”

She said nothing else, but she continued to look at Waters, and he knew something was working behind her eyes.

“What is it, Ana?”

“Well…I think maybe Lucy and Pam have been doing something they’re not supposed to.”

Two girls, Waters thought. This can’t be too bad. “Like what?”

Annelise clearly wanted to speak, but still she hesitated.

“You know you can tell me anything, baby. You’re not going to get in trouble. No matter what it is.”

“Well…they’ve been going to the closet during recess to see stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Stuff Mr. Danny shows them.”

A chill raced up Waters’s back, and a vague image of a soft-faced thirty-year-old carrying a ladder came into his mind. “What does Mr. Danny show them?”

“I don’t know. But I think it’s stuff girls aren’t supposed to look at.”

Waters desperately wanted more information, but he didn’t want to press his daughter on something sexual. “Have you been in that closet, Ana?”

“No way. I don’t like Mr. Danny.”

“Why not?”

“He reminds me of something. I don’t know what. Something from a movie. When he looks at me, I feel creepy.”

Waters realized his hands were shaking. “Rose!”

With a sudden clank of metal, Rose’s footsteps sounded in the hall and she appeared in the door, a stout black woman in her sixties who looked as though she would make it through her nineties with ease.

“What is it, Mr. John?”

“I’ve got to run an errand. I want you to keep Annelise with you in the kitchen until Lily gets back. You understand?”

Rose often forgot things like switching on cell phones, but she was hypersensitive to the subtleties of human behavior.

“I’ll keep her right by me. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be back soon.”

Rose smiled at Annelise. “You run in the kitchen, girl. I’ll let you mix the cornbread today.”

Annelise smiled, then stood and ran into the kitchen.

Rose’s smile vanished. “Something bad done happened, Mr. Johnny? Is Lily all right?”

“She’s fine. It’s business, Rose.”

Rose’s look said she knew different. “You go on. I won’t let that baby out of my sight.”

“Thank you.”

Waters hurried out to the Land Cruiser and roared down the driveway. Picking up his cell phone, he called directory assistance and got the number of Kevin Flynn, the president of the Board of Trustees of St. Stephens Prep. Waters had not known Flynn well growing up, but as a major contributor to the school’s annual fund, he knew the man would bend over backward to accommodate him.

“Hello?” said Flynn.

“Kevin, this is John Waters.”

“Hey, John. What’s up?”

“I think we have a problem at the school.”

“Oh, no. Air-conditioning gone again?”

“No. It’s much more serious. I don’t want to discuss it on a cell. I think we should meet at the school.”

“Why don’t you come by my office?”

An attorney with two partners, Flynn owned a nice building four blocks up Main Street from Waters’s office. “The school would be better. Would that maintenance man still be there? Danny?”

“I think he stays till five, most days.”

“Meet me there. Do you know Tom Jackson well?”

A hesitation. “The police detective?”

“Yes. He and I graduated from South Natchez together.”

“Is this a police matter, John?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m going to have Tom meet us there if he can.”

“Jesus. I’m on my way.”

Waters tried to hold the Land Cruiser at the speed limit as he called the police department.

Kevin Flynn’s Infiniti was parked near the front door of St. Stephens when Waters arrived, and the lawyer climbed out when he saw the Land Cruiser. An athletic man of medium height, Flynn had an open manner that made people like him immediately. Waters got out and shook hands, noticing as he did that some of the school’s front windows were open to let in the autumn air.

“What’s going on, John?” Flynn asked. “Why the secrecy? Why the cops?”

“Let’s talk inside.”

Flynn’s smile slipped a little, but he led Waters through the front door and into the headmaster’s empty office. He sat behind the desk, Waters on a sofa facing him.

“You look pretty upset,” the attorney said.

“You’re about to join me.” Waters quickly recounted his conversation with Annelise, omitting any mention of Eve Sumner’s initial warning. By the time he finished, Flynn had covered his mouth with one hand and was shaking his head.

“Jesus Christ, John. This is my worst nightmare. We do background checks on everyone we hire, for just this reason. We’re required to by the insurance company. Danny Buckles came back clean.”

A soft knock sounded at the office door. Waters turned and saw Tom Jackson leaning through the door, his outsized frame intimidating in the small space. The detective had light blue eyes and a cowboy-style mustache, and the brushed gray nine-millimeter automatic on his hip magnified the subtle aura of threat he projected.

“What’s going on, fellas?” he asked, extending a big hand to Waters. “John? Long time.”

Waters let Flynn take the lead.

“We’re afraid we may have a molestation situation on our hands, Detective. Our maintenance man, Danny Buckles. John’s daughter said Danny’s been taking some second-grade girls into a closet to ‘show them things.’”

Jackson sighed and pursed his lips. “We’d better talk to him, then.”

“I have a civil practice. Nothing criminal. How should we handle this?”

“Is Buckles here now?”

“Yes. Or he should be, anyway.”

“You’re the head of the school board, right? Invite him in for a friendly chat. I’ll stand where he can see me when he goes in to talk to you. You got a portable tape recorder?”

“Dr. Andrews has one, I think.” Flynn searched the headmaster’s desk and brought out a small Sony. “Here we go.”

“Tell him you want to record the conversation as a formality. If he starts screaming for a lawyer, that’ll tell us something.”

“I’d scream for a lawyer,” Flynn declared, “and I’m innocent.”

“You never know what these guys will do,” Jackson said thoughtfully. “Molesters are a slimy bunch. They frequently take jobs where they’ll be close to children. At video arcades, camps, even churches.”

“Jesus,” breathed Flynn. “I wish you hadn’t told me that. I’ve got six-year-old twins.”

The attorney went into the front office and paged Danny Buckles over the intercom system. After about twenty seconds, a hillbilly voice answered, “I’m on my way.” While they waited, Flynn got out Buckles’s personnel file and scanned it.

“Here’s Danny’s background check. Clean as a whistle.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Detective Jackson. “You pay a hundred bucks, a hundred bucks worth of checking is what you get. All kinds of stuff slip through those.”

A white man in his early thirties suddenly appeared at the window. Blades of grass covered his shirt, and his face was pink-cheeked from labor.

“That’s Danny,” said Flynn, giving the janitor an awkward wave.

Waters looked into the bland face, trying to read what secrets might lie behind it.

“We’ll go out without saying anything to him,” Jackson said to Flynn. “Then you bring him in.”

Waters followed the detective out into the school’s entrance area, a wide hallway lined with trophy cases. Jackson gave Buckles a long look as he passed, and Waters thought he saw the color go out of the maintenance man’s face.

“Your little girl told you about this?” Jackson asked Waters as Buckles went through the door.

“That’s right,” Waters replied, watching through the window as Flynn led the younger man into the headmaster’s private office.

“Just out of the blue?”

“Not exactly.”

Jackson’s face grew grave. “Did he touch your little girl, John?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not up here to do anything stupid, are you?”

Waters looked Jackson full in the face. He was six foot one, but he still had to tilt his head up to meet the detective’s suspicious gaze. “Like what?”

The detective was watching him closely. “You’re not armed.”

“Hell no. If I was going to kill the guy, would I have called you first?”

“It happens. This kind of situation, especially. Fathers have killed molesters right in front of deputies and then turned themselves in on the spot.”

“Don’t worry about that, Tom.”

A sound between a wail and a scream suddenly issued from the headmaster’s office. Waters froze, but Jackson ran straight for the receptionist’s door. As he opened it, Waters heard Kevin Flynn say, “Detective? This is a police matter now.”

When Waters reached the office, he saw Danny Buckles sitting on the sofa he himself had occupied only moments before. Buckles’s cheeks were bright red and streaked with tears, and his nose was running like a crying child’s.

“I can’t help it!” he sobbed. “I try and try, but it don’t…do…no…good. It won’t let me loose! I can’t stop thinking about it.”

A shudder of revulsion went through Waters, followed by an unreasoning anger.

“I don’t hurt ’em none!” Danny whined in a tone of supplication. “You ask ’em.”

“Danny Buckles isn’t even his real name,” said Flynn. “God, what a mess. What am I going to tell the parents of those little girls?”

“The truth,” Tom Jackson said. “As soon as you can. Call both parents of each child and get them up here right now. Twenty minutes after I get this boy down to the station, the story’ll be all over town. I’m sorry, but you know how it works.”

“Yes, I do,” Flynn murmured.

For Waters, a different reality had suddenly sunk in. Eve Sumner had warned him of this danger, and her warning had proved accurate. Did the beautiful real estate agent know this blubbering pervert sitting on the couch? She must. How else could she know what he’d been up to? Waters started to tell Jackson about Eve, but even as he opened his mouth, something held him back.

“I’m going home, guys,” he said. “I want to hug my little girl.”

“I may need you to make a statement,” said Jackson. “But I’ll try to keep your daughter out of it.”

“Thanks, Tom. You know where to find me.”

Jackson told “Danny Buckles” he was going to place him under arrest. The janitor started crying again, then moaned something about how horribly he’d been abused in jail. Waters walked calmly out of the office and climbed into his Land Cruiser. He drove slowly away from the school, but as soon as he reached the highway, he accelerated to seventy and headed toward the Mississippi River Bridge. Eve Sumner’s office was on the bypass that led to the twin spans, and if he pushed it, he could be there in less than five minutes.