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.”Fred put the paper down and looked at me.“What are you planning to do today?”“I’m going out to the school to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and by the hospital to take Claire Moon some gowns.Maybe some shopping.Why?”“It would be a good day for you to read a book in front of the fire and take it easy.”I nodded that it would.“Stay with me.”“Can’t.” We looked at each other.Be safe.Be safe.“You want some more coffee?” I asked.The thermometer on the Central Bank Building read 45 degrees when I drove by on my way to Alexander High.The cold rain had turned into a heavy drizzle that seemed to coat everything like oil.I hoped it would be over before the temperature took its expected nosedive.We didn’t need any ice right before Christmas.I turned into the parking lot and found a visitor’s space empty.Vice Principal Chesley Maddox, whom the kids called Chesty Maggot (but way, way behind his back), ran a tight ship in the parking lot.A scrawny little man, he had the Dirty Harry look down so pat that even while the students were laughing about him, they were shaking in their boots.“Come on,” he seemed to say.“Try parking in the teachers’ or visitors’ lot.” They never took him up on it.Frances Zata was on the phone, but she motioned me to a seat.Her office was bright and cheerful—no windows, of course, but posters from Tivoli Gardens and the British Museum and the famous “Earth Rise” livened the walls.“Sorry,” she said when she hung up.“Come give me a hug.God, I miss you.”Frances is my age, sixty, but she doesn’t look it.She is what my grandmother called a “handsome” woman.She found her style, a very elegant one, early, and it has done well by her.Her dark blond hair is pulled back into a chignon which she varies sometimes with a French braid.She wears simple silk blouses, straight or A-line skirts, usually in beige or black, and low-heeled pumps.Her earrings are either pearls or gold loops.And only I know that several years ago she had a face-lift because she was mad about a younger man.One of those sex slave things Mary Alice talks about.The affair didn’t work out, but the face-lift did.Frances looks great.“You want some coffee?” she asked after we had inquired about each other’s families.Frances has one son, a lawyer, a friend of my Alan.I shook my head no.She leaned back and took a manila envelope from a bookcase.“Here’s the stuff about Claire Needham,” she said.“I had to go to court for her, you know, so there’s some extra stuff in there.Nothing privileged.That would be down at Juvenile Court.” She handed me the files.“What’s the matter with her, Patricia Anne?”“She’s in Memorial Hospital in the psych unit.” I started telling Frances that I had not seen Claire for years until I went to the opening of Mercy Armistead’s art gallery.She stopped me.“The woman who was killed?”I nodded.“Whose mother was Betty Bedsole, the Miss Alabama?”“According to Mary Alice.How do the two of you keep up with these things?”“Whoa.Wait just a minute.” Frances scooted around the desk and grabbed the file I had just opened.“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, flipping pages.“What?”“Ah ha! I knew it.I was looking through these just before you came in and that name sounded familiar.Look here, Patricia Anne.” Frances stuck a page right in front of my face.I took it away from her and held it so my eyes would focus.“Right there.” She pointed.I saw the typed name of Liliane Bedsole first.Then I looked to the left.“Guardian.”“I don’t understand,” I said.Frances sat on the edge of the desk, took the form back, and looked at it again.“I’m sorry.Get on with your story.The name just struck me.”“Liliane Bedsole was Claire’s guardian? She’s Mercy’s aunt.Great-aunt.”Frances nodded.“I thought there might be some connection.According to the records, Liliane Bedsole read about the abuse case in the paper and was so upset about it, she petitioned the court for all three of them.Those little girls finally had some luck.”“I thought there was a brother.”Frances shook her head.“Claire and twin girls five years younger.Precious children.Can’t remember their names.”“They’re all precious,” I murmured.“They looked like something out of a concentration camp.The twins did.Claire had fared some better nutrition-wise.Probably because they sent her to school and she got lunch.The twins had never gone to school when Youth Services finally took them over.”“But Claire was sexually abused by her father.”“Yes.” Frances slid from the desk and went around to sit in her chair.“You sit there in court, Patricia Anne, and you see these people who don’t look like monsters and then you see what they’ve done to their children and it shakes you to the core.”“Where are they now? The parents.”“Both dead, I understand.The father got in a fight in jail and a fellow inmate killed him.The mother died of a drug overdose.”“And Liliane Bedsole took the children.”Frances leaned back and toyed with a pencil on her desk [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]