I used the AmEx card for business lunches, to book work-related travel, and occasionally, always at Alex's request, to pay for miscellaneous expenses he didn't want billed to his own card. Because of the "bean counters," he'd said. It'd look better for the accountants if certain expenses didn't show up on his card.
"Did you hire a masseuse named Tiki Finesse for Representative Licata?" Shalani asked.
I squeezed my eyes tight and thought back to that night in December, when we were down in Lyford Cay. I was supposed to meet Alex for dinner that night, but he'd canceled the dinner because he said he needed to meet with Licata privately. I'd been bitterly disappointed.
I vividly remembered the conversation.
"Licata doesn't want to go out, because he pulled a muscle in his lower back, working out with the hotel's trainer," Alex told me. "What a fucking baby." Alex's tone was conspiratorial. "Keeps whining about his fucking back. Can you do me a favor? Call that number I gave you earlier, and tell them to send a massage therapist up to the room. Just charge it to your company card."
I'd called the same number, and a different woman had answered the phone. The first woman had sounded faintly British, but the second woman had a harsh, New Yorksounding accent. I'd given her Licata's room number, and my credit card number, and she'd assured me all would be taken care of.
Obviously, she'd taken care of the congressman in a way I'd been too dumb to anticipate.
"Licata was complaining of back pain," I told Shalani Byers. "It was supposed to be a therapeutic massage."
"Sixteen hundred dollars, according to my source, who's seen all the records," Shalani Byers retorted. "You ever hear of a sixteen-hundred-dollar massage? I mean, one that doesn't include what the pros call a 'happy ending'?"
"I never see the statements for the AmEx card," I whispered.
"What?" Through the glass sidelights I could see that Shalani Byers was standing with her own face pressed up against the door.
"Go away," I said.
"What's that?" Shalani said. "Come on, Dempsey. Let's sit down and talk. You know. Face-to-face. Like, woman to woman. What do you say?"
"No comment," I said dully, walking away from the door and upstairs.
From the upstairs bedroom window, I watched Shalani Byers and the photographer go back to the Ford Focus. He poked the lens of the camera out the passenger window one more time, and then they drove off.
I waited until I saw the car turn the corner before I took my cell phone out of my purse. Even while I was punching in Alex's cell phone number, I was gripped by paranoia, wondering if, somehow, the girl had managed to plant some kind of listening device on the porch.
"Stop it!" I told myself.
Alex's phone rang once, and went directly to voice mail.
"Alex, it's Dempsey." I was whispering, my paranoia lingering. "A reporter for the Washington Post just showed up at my house down here. She's saying awful things." I gulped. "She says you've given my company AmEx receipts to the grand jury. Alex-I really need you to call me and tell me what's going on up there. Okay? Please?"
I sounded desperate and needy and pathetic. I felt exactly the same way. I waited five minutes, hoping the phone would ring immediately, that Alex would hear the panic in my voice and call back to reassure me that Shalani Byers was totally misinformed. But the phone didn't ring. Finally, I tucked it in the pocket of Norbert's overalls and went back downstairs.
I stumbled into the kitchen, where Bobby Livesey was punching numbers into a pocket calculator.
I sank down on the chair opposite his. With shaking hands, I picked up the coffeepot and poured myself a fresh mug, sloshing some on the table. I took a long sip, trying to steady my nerves.
"Everything all right?" he asked, putting the calculator down. "You look like you got some bad news just now."
My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I clasped them in my lap, willing them to be still.
"My past seems to be catching up with me," I said finally.
"Past?" he looked amused. "What kind of past can a young gal like you have? What'd you do-rob a bank or something?"
I bit my lower lip until I tasted blood.
"Hey now," Bobby said, startled. "I was just kiddin'. I didn't mean nothing by it."
"It's all right," I said, struggling to gain control of my racing emotions. I nodded toward the clipboard. "What do you think? Do you have more bad news for me?"
He tapped the paper with his mechanical pencil. "You serious about what you said before? About doing a lot of the work yourself? You ever done any home improvement before?"
"I'm dead serious," I said. "And no, I've never done any manual labor before. You'll have to show me how. But I'm a hard worker, and I've been told I'm a quick study."
"The roof's the big-ticket item," Bobby said, eyeing the figures on the page. "That roof is slate," he added, pointing his finger toward the ceiling. "Some of the tiles are broken, some of 'em are missing. I'm gonna have to peel 'em all off, replace the old tarpaper with one of the new impervious neoprene skins, then put all the slates back. I'll need to see about getting a source to replace the damaged slate tiles. Probably have to be special ordered. I won't lie to you. It's gonna cost."
"Can't we just patch it up-"
"No, ma'am," he said firmly. "No patches. No shortcuts. That roof-you need it done right. Or you sacrifice the integrity of the whole structure. Ain't no use spending money on plaster or wiring or anything else if you don't do the roof just right. You see what I'm saying?"
"I'm beginning to," I told him. I took another long sip of coffee.
"All right then," he said, nodding contentedly. "Now you're talking."
"What else? Besides the roof?" I asked. "You've already told me about the wiring. What about the plumbing? The water pressure in the house is pathetic. Please don't tell me we need all new pipes."
"Naw," Bobby said. He got up and went over to the sink, turning on the faucet. "You got solid-copper commercial-grade pipe in this house. That pipe will be good long after you and me are both dead and in the grave."
He picked up a drinking glass from the drain board and filled it with water. "See that nasty rust in the water, when you first turn on the faucet? The problem is, the old line to the street is cast iron. It's rusting from the inside, you probably only got a half inch clearance inside a two-inch water line. We're gonna have to dig up the front yard. It'll mess up Mr. Norbert's lawn, for sure, but once we replace that cast-iron mess with new pipe, we'll get rid of the rust, and your water pressure will be fine."
"No kidding? It's just the line running to the street? You're sure?" I hadn't had a lot of good news lately, so I was grasping at straws here.
"Oh yeah, the plumbing ain't no problem," Bobby said.
"What about this kitchen?" I asked, gesturing around at the dingy cupboards and outdated appliances. "What's it gonna cost to bring this thing into the twenty-first century?"
Bobby got up and walked over to the sink. He ran his hand over the deep porcelain sink, opened and closed a cupboard door, and said, "Ain't no doubt about it. This kitchen's got some age on it. So, you could just rip everything out. Go over to the Home Depot in Macon, get you some shiny new cabinets, one of them new farmhouse sinks, order up some granite countertops and some stainless-steel appliances."
This was exactly the plan that had been forming in my mind. In my suitcase upstairs, I had a file folder devoted exclusively to pictures of fabulous kitchens, which I'd ripped out of magazines over the years. My favorite one-my dream kitchen-was a Tuscan farmhouse kitchen, with tumbled-marble backsplashes, fumed oak cabinets, an enormous imported blood red Aga cookstove, and a glass-doored Traulsen refrigerator. That kitchen had ancient, exposed hand-hewn ceiling beams, and a separate butler's pantry. According to the magazine, the kitchen belonged to a software entrepreneur who'd sold his company at the age of thirty, and retired to a quail-hunting lodge in Thomasville, Georgia. Of course, that kitchen had probably come in at a neat quarter of a million dollars. At least.
It wouldn't be possible, or even desirable, to reproduce a kitchen like that at Birdsong. But the one thing this kitchen did have in common with that dream kitchen was space.
This dreary old dud was big. It had high-although water-stained-ceilings, and a bank of windows that looked out on Birdsong's weed-infested backyard. It too had a butler's pantry. Of course, its glass-paned cupboard doors were coated in multiple layers of chipped and peeling paint, and somebody had chosen to wallpaper it in imitation redbrick Con-Tact paper, but it was, nevertheless, a butler's pantry.
"New cabinets-let's say just stock cabinets, not custom; stainless-steel appliances; granite; new flooring; the whole shebang. What would that run-ballpark?" I asked Bobby.
His fingers raced over the calculator keys, and he winced when he saw the final tally. "Yeah. That's what I thought. Minimum? If we did all the demo of the old kitchen ourselves-maybe find floor-model appliances-you save a little money that way. We're talking thirty thousand. And that's assuming we don't move any of the water lines or mess with the floor plan."
"Oh." Mentally, I put the kitchen file folder in the far recesses of my mind.
"Yeah," Bobby said. "Kitchens eat up a lot of money. Still, we could make this here kitchen real nice without spending anywhere near that much money."
I was about to ask him what he had in mind when the cell phone in my pocket started ringing.
I grabbed the phone and looked at the display readout. unknown caller, it said.
"Excuse me, Bobby," I said, jumping up and running out of the room. I took the stairs three at a time, and on the third ring, and the top step, I flipped the phone open.
"Hello?" I said breathlessly.
"Dempsey?" It was Alex. Thank God.
20.
"Dempsey?"
"Alex!" I said. "You got my message."
"Where the hell are you?" he asked.
"I'm in Georgia. A little town south of Atlanta, called Guthrie."
"Listen," he said urgently. "I don't have much time. Are you all right?"
"I've been better," I said. "How about you? I've been calling and calling. I even went to your house...the night...everything happened. Did Trish tell you I came by?"
"No. She never mentioned it. Trish and I...well, anyway, that's not why I'm calling. I got your message. What's going on?"
"This reporter from the Washington Post showed up here-at the house where I'm staying. Her name was Shalani Byers. And she had a photographer with her."
"When was this?"
"Today, just now."
"You didn't let her in the house, right?"
"No. I kept asking her to leave, but she was pretty insistent. Alex, she claims she has a source on the grand jury-"
"Bullshit!" Alex said angrily. "That's how these shits operate. They come up with a lot of innuendo and speculation, to trick you into saying things you don't mean."
"She said the grand jury has seen the statements for my company-issued AmEx card, Alex. And she claims it shows a four-thousand-dollar charge for that wakeboard instructor I booked for-"
"Never mind that," Alex said quickly. "I can't discuss any of this stuff right now. In fact, Dempsey, it would be a good idea if you didn't call my cell phone again."
"Wait," I said panicking. "Look, this woman says the charges on my card were billed from a company called Pleasure Chest. Alex, she also said there was a sixteen-hundred-dollar charge for the same company, for that massage therapist you asked me to have sent up to Licata's hotel room that night at the-"
"Dempsey! For Christ's sake," Alex barked. "I told you I cannot discuss this. Look, if that reporter comes back, send her away. Don't say anything to her, do you hear?"
"I didn't," I said. "I haven't, but-"
"Take care, Dempsey," he said. "I'll be in touch again. All right?"
He hung up. I flipped the phone closed, then opened it again. I punched the button on the phone's display screen for calls received. unknown caller it said. No number was listed. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't call Alex Hodder back.
21.
Out in the kitchen, Bobby was bent over the kitchen table, rapidly sketching on a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper.
"Everything okay?" he asked, not looking up from his drawing.
"Not so much," I said. I'd been waiting for weeks to hear from Alex, certain he would clear up the matter of my firing, hoping he would assure me that everything was going to be all right. From the moment I'd met him, I'd known that Alex Hodder was a man who was capable of fixing anything that went wrong with my life.
Okay, now I'd heard from Alex. A telephone conversation that lasted a little over a minute had left my future as clear as mud. My stomach churned and my mouth was dry.
I stood beside Bobby and looked down at the sketch. "What's this?"
"Just an idea I had," he said. "For your kitchen."
"Forget it," I said. "After the roof and the wiring and the paint, there won't be enough money left over to do anything to this kitchen." I sank down onto a kitchen chair and stared blankly into my cup of cold coffee, where the creamer made a small milky cloud.
"Sure there is," Bobby said, patting my hand reassuringly. "There's a lot we can do in here, with just a little bit of money."
"And dynamite,' I said bleakly.
"No, now, look here," he said, placing a cabinet door on the table.
"What's this supposed to be?" I asked.
He took the edge of his penknife and scraped at the goopy paint on the door. Underneath the dingy white paint, I could see a rainbow of paint layers, bright yellow, pale pink, even a soft aqua. When he'd scraped a nickel-size patch of paint away, I could see bare wood.
"See that," he said, scratching at the paint with his index finger. "Ain't that pretty?"
"Wood," I said. "I guess so."
"That there's pine," Bobby said. "Good old heart pine. And every single one of these cabinet doors is the same way. Solid pine. None of that pressboard junk or veneer you get these days. The drawers are solid pine too. The boxes and the drawer fronts."